


This Never Happened to Captain Kirk

by nacimynom



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Non-Consensual Violence, Psychological Trauma, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con References, SGA Series: Legacy, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 33
Words: 102,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nacimynom/pseuds/nacimynom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early in a relationship with Teyla, Sheppard becomes the prisoner of a powerful person who has an unhealthy obsession for him. He must escape before his captor's unwanted attention maims him, kills him or breaks him. But escape may be the easy part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The story is set post-season five in a sort of AU beginning early in book three (Allegiance) of the wonderful Legacy Series of SGA novels written by Joe Graham, Amy Griswold and Melissa Scott. The story contains some spoilers for these books. SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun, not profit.

The market square looked harmless enough. Because Teyla had been sucked in the conversation between the Chancellor and Mr. Woosley, John decided to cover their six, with Ronon in the front and sergeant Comsky flanking Teyla. Everything seemed fine until he developed a nagging feeling that they were being tracked.

They were walking down an aisle of the bustling open-air market. The stalls in this section contained bolts of cloth, intricate carpets, thick blankets and all kinds of clothing made from multi-colored fabrics imported from all over the Pegasus galaxy. The Chancellor, a pompous ass dressed like an extra in _Romeo and Juliet_ , loudly pontificated about the benefits of a new trade agreement with this or that member of the coalition.

John wasn’t paying attention to the droning monologue, that was Woosley’s job and now also Teyla’s. Instead, he continually scanned the area for possible threats, not an easy task with all the commotion. His attention flicked from the merchants broadcasting their wares, to the haggling customers and the doors and windows of the two and three story buildings surrounding the market square. Security risks were everywhere. Despite his advice, the Chancellor had insisted that this little outing for the negotiators would be perfectly safe and that it was somehow absolutely necessary for the success of the process. John had to put his foot down as military commander of Atlantis and say that he would not allow Mr. Woosley to participate in this walk unless he, Teyla, Ronon and Marine Sergeant Comisky were allowed to tag along with their weapons.

“Ronon, see anything unusual up front?” John said in his com unit.

“Everything seems fine here,” replied Ronon. “Is something going on there, Sheppard?”

John took another careful look around, “Something doesn’t feel right. I feel like someone is watching m….”

The lone high-velocity crossbow arrow that struck him in the upper right arm came from one of the buildings across the square that stood in the unforgiving glare of the late morning twin suns. He yelped more in surprise than in pain as he staggered backwards. He would have fallen to the ground but someone unexpectedly grabbed him from behind and held him steady, while at the same time uncomfortably pinning his arms tight against his torso. The P-90 slipped from his grip and hung off his tactical vest.

“Sheppard, what’s going on?” said Ronon on the com. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m …,” He started to say and then his com ear piece got yanked off. Everything began to look fuzzy as he tracked the unit’s trajectory to the ground. A heavy booted-foot smashed it. 

John’s efforts to break loose were not very effective because a strange numbness quickly radiated from the wound site to the rest of his body. Feeling himself starting to lose consciousness, his eyes searched for a visual of the rest of his team. The crowd had suddenly become thicker and several people carrying goods were blocking his line of sight.

“Let me help you,” said a man in a definitely non-reassuring voice. He manhandled the quickly-fading John to the back of one of the stalls.

“Not helpful, damn it.” John changed his balance and managed to loosen the man’s grip on him. But before he could make his next move, he fell to the ground behind the stall, unconscious.

“That tranquilizer took almost too long to take effect,” grumbled the man to his companion. “Give me a hand, he’s heavier than he looks.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

John woke up bound and gagged. A rope tightly restrained his hands and arms behind his back. His wounded bicep stung ferociously. Pretending to still be unconscious before making his move, he caught the two super-sized men dragging him by surprise. He almost made it to the edge of the thick forest adjacent to the Stargate before his now very angry escorts and three more of their associates caught up with him. Needless to say, they weren’t very gentle.

“Remember, she ordered us not to injure him in the face or below the belt.” he overheard one of the goons yell to the others.

This puzzling piece of dialogue worried him as they punched and kicked him back into oblivion. Why would anyone obviously intending him harm care about preserving those parts of him?

The next time John regained consciousness, several hands tightly immobilized him while others efficiently and rather brutally stripped him of boots, socks, tac-vest and jacket. His vision was so blurry that he couldn’t tell if they were men or women, or if there were four or eight. Automatically, he resisted being handled like a doll by short-tempered giant toddlers. Someone grabbed his wounded arm and squeezed it hard, the pain explosion knocked him out before they removed his shirt and pants.

 


	2. Chapter 2

In a fitful dream, John was naked, strapped spread-eagle to a hard table while someone painfully cleaned and stitched his wounded arm. Someone else poured a hot and sticky liquid around his privates and, after it cooled solid, tore it off in strips along with his hair. The pain and confusion felt so real.

He woke up with goose bumps all over his body and a sickening realization that the nightmare had not been a dream. On the plus side, instead of being naked, he had on his boxer briefs and he was lying on a massive four-poster bed, definitely not a table. On the minus side, his crotch felt strangely irritated and he couldn’t move. His arms and legs were stretched wide and firmly tied to the thick bars of the hardwood head and foot boards. His right arm was bandaged.

“Oh crap.” He pulled and twisted his wrists to try to loosen the restraints. “This can’t be good.”

“I am glad you are finally awake,” said a woman’s voice that he did not recognize. “I am eager to get to know you better.”

“Who are you and what the hell do you want?” He turned toward her voice, blinking several times to focus his vision.

The first thing he noticed was that her aquiline features matched the sharpness of her tone. She was tall, probably about his height, and built like an Amazon—a combination of curves and muscles, that reminded Sheppard of a female Ronon. Piles of wavy light chestnut hair fell to her shoulders from a complicated headdress. The Empire-style waist of her long dark purple satin gown was rimmed with gold at the cap sleeves and hem. Long slits on the sides of the dress revealed flashes of copper-colored naked leg as she strode across the room.

“We met at the Chancellor’s gala three months ago. I am offended that you don’t remember me,” she said. Her smile did not reach her eyes. “I am Lady Vernara Alkamade.”

After staring at her for a few moments, he remembered their previous encounter a few months before  at some fancy-assed evening affair he and his team had been forced to attend with Mr. Woosley. She had cornered him and had tried to entice him to walk with her in the gardens. Her hungry eyes and roaming hands had raised his shackles. Thank goodness, Teyla had rescued him by asking him to join her in meeting some other officials. 

“Okay, I do remember when we met. But why did you have me dragged here?” While finding himself tied to a bed wearing only his underwear did give him a strong clue as to her intentions—it still seemed too ridiculous to be true.

“I think it’s pretty obvious why I had you brought here,” she climbed onto the bed and straddled his thighs. “I had been wanting to have you since our first encounter, but it took some time to find the right circumstances to acquire you.”

“You acquired me? I am not some piece of property,” the panther like way she was climbing over him was starting to freak him out. “Look, I would like to get to know you better, but I am kind of busy fighting the Wraith. Maybe when things quiet down…”

“Things are quiet here, but might not remain so for long,” Out of seemingly nowhere, she produced a knife and nicked the skin below his Adam’s apple. She placed her other hand over his mouth, “Silence. Let me show you what will happen if you argue with me.”

With the tip of the knife, she traced a long thin line spiraling out from the inside of his left elbow almost to his shoulder. The line thickened with blood. John concentrated on steadying his breaths to ignore the stinging pain.

“I have always wanted to flay someone alive. This might be a good opportunity for me to start,” she made multiple shorter cuts perpendicular to the first. “Oh, look what I have done to you. I must clean it up.” She secured her knife to the leather sheath strapped to her lower right leg and grabbed a cup from the nearby night table. She poured its contents on the fishbone arrangement of shallow wounds.

The sharp burn from the strong fermented beverage made him gasp. “I… I get the message, no more complaining.”  

“Good,” she caressed his cheeks and ran her fingers through his hair, her nose close enough to graze his. “Such remarkable dark thick hair, a wonderful contrast to your fair skin.”

With a light touch, her index finger went across his forehead and followed the ridge of his nose down to the lips and chin. She held his jaw steady as she brought her mouth to take a surprisingly gentle nibble on his lower lip.

Lips lightly kissing his mouth, her hands wandered to his collarbone and down his chest. “Were my guards a little too rough with you? Let me make sure that they didn’t hurt any of the important parts.” Her touch was light on the darkening red and purple bruises scattered on his chest. “I’ll have their hide if they did.”

She skirted over the bruised skin and felt her way down the middle of his rib cage toward his exposed belly button. John felt a moment’s relief when she stopped before venturing inside his underwear. Instead, she moved back to his chest and leaned into him. With her tongue she slowly traversed the space between his nipples, stopping at each endpoint to gently suck it to attention. He hissed to stop himself from shouting obscenities at her. Don’t piss off the crazy lady, she has a very sharp knife and you are tied up like a virgin sacrifice—he repeated that mantra to force himself not to react verbally or physically.   

She moved up to nuzzle his neck as one of her hands dropped back down to his hips, on top of his boxers. She traced the contours beneath the stretchy fabric. The feeling of the material pressed on his skin made him realize in horror that his pubic hair was gone. Holly crap, somehow in his wounded and drug-induced stupor he had been given a full Brazilian.

After circling for a while, her hand slid to the apex of his crotch, pressing in a slow circular motion. To John’s chagrin, his traitorous dick twitched. Pleased by its response, she encouraged it with stronger strokes. An unmistakably thickening protrusion began to stretch the black fabric.

“I have never seen such a form fitting and soft undergarment.” Vernara looked down with an appreciative smile, “Much more appealing than those baggy coarse things our men usually wear.”

“How about we start underwear trade negotiations?” John knew that this was a very meek attempt at distraction. “If you are impressed by this, you should see what we have for ladies.”

Ignoring him, she explored the prominent pouch of his briefs and quickly found the side fly opening. John felt his heart jump in his chest when Vernara slipped her fingers inside to clasp him and squeeze.

“I am pleased that my imagination was not far off the mark regarding the size of you manhood,” she said. She hitched the skirt of her gown higher and slid her bottom up his hips to rub herself against him. From what he felt through the thin material of his briefs, he was sure that Vernara was bare in every sense of the word.

“Look Vernara, it’s not fair that I get all the attention,” John surprised himself by how jovial he managed to sound. He controlled the urge to squirm away from her wet contact. “If you untie one of my wrists, I will be happy to oblige you. Ladies have complimented me on my fine motor skills.”

She swiftly repositioned her body to reach down between his legs and grab him. The twist of her wrist made him gasp.

“Do you think that I am a fool? When we first met, I gave you plenty of chances to come to my bed willingly,” Vernara’s voice hissed in anger. “Now, you will learn what happens to men who refuse me.”

John clenched his jaw shut, not wanting to show any further signs of discomfort. She released him and swept her hand upward to thread her fingers through his chest hair, tugging slightly.

“Now that I think of it, I am glad you didn’t. This is going to be a lot more enjoyable … at least for me.” She dismounted from his hips and walked across the room with an exaggerated swaying of hips. Her back turned away, he couldn’t see what she was doing.

John felt panic rising in his gut. Vernara had total control and, despite the message being sent by his pesky penis, he did not have any desire to have sex with her. Forgetting his Gandhi-inspired mantra, he strained to loosen the leather restraints. He barely managed to move his arms and legs a few inches. Not surprisingly, they had no give. His shoulders burned from the effort and he felt as if something was sawing through his appendages.

“Now John, stop that,” Vernara said in a scolding tone. “You will only cause further injury to yourself. Your wrists and ankles are already scrapped and will soon bleed if you keep on pulling so.”

She dropped a black pouch on the covers. It made a clanging noise. She climbed back on the bed to straddle his calves and with both hands she reached over to the waistband of his briefs.

“I would really enjoy cutting these off you,” she said tugging to move them down past his hips. “But I like the way they look on you and you will need them later.”

To try to stop her from stripping him completely, John tensed his body, pressing himself into the bed. She reached over to put her weight on his wounded shoulder. He gasped at the sharp pain.

“Have you already forgotten my warning? There is no sense resisting me, John.” Her left hand continued pulling down his underwear, unconcerned when her nails scratched his skin. “I will not hesitate to further injure you. In fact, I find you even more attractive when you are in pain.”

Fighting his inner revulsion at what was happening, John tried to be pragmatic. He knew that he was powerless to stop this woman from having her way with him. He cringed at thinking like a female character from those trashy romances some of the women in the expedition were addicted to (even Teyla had started to get into them; he enjoyed teasing her about that).

The little resistance that he could manage in the present circumstances would end up driving her to hurt him even more. If his arm got any worse or if he drove her to maim him in other ways—and best not think about what ways—he would not be able to take advantage of whatever opportunities to escape he might have in the future. This all made sense, but he wasn’t so sure that he could passively take what seemed to be inevitable.

At least, as a first step, he stopped resisting her efforts to remove his last remaining article of clothing. She slid further down his legs to give herself a bit more room to maneuver as she tugged down the briefs. When her hands stopped midway down his thighs to knead his bare ass, John felt his face flush.

“You are all lean, chiseled muscle,” she said before pulling the underwear all the way down to stretch wide between his ankles. “I suspected it when I first saw you walk in at the gala wearing your trim blue uniform. It is a shame that my men did not capture you in that outfit. I would have enjoyed peeling it off you.”

Her ice-blue eyes swept up and down John’s nude length. She licked her lips, reminding him of a lioness eyeing her prey. Supporting her weight with her left hand on his bruised upper chest, her right hand caressed his newly hairless triangle before plunging between his legs to cup him. John held his breath not knowing what to expect. She fondled his parts with a few quick strokes, as if to size them up. John was glad that his penis had the decency to shrink. _Way to go boy_ —he mentally encouraged it to stay that way— _the goal on this mission is actually not to stand-up to this kind of torture_.

“Look, this is ridiculous,” John interrupted Vernara’s appraisal of his nether regions. “You can see that I am not into this sort of thing.”

“Do not worry dear colonel. I have delightful ways to make you ready to fulfill my needs.” She reached for one of the cylindrical decorative pillow on her bed and added, “but first I must readjust your position. Lift up your hips.”

“Do not give me an excuse to hurt your again,” she said when he hesitated to obey her command. With a quickness that showed expert training, she again pulled out her handy knife. “I know many ways to cut you without affecting your ability to pleasure me.”

To demonstrate, she pressed the point of the knife below his right nipple and carved a thin curved crimson line. These slow shallow cuts hurt much more than quicker deeper ones. She proceeded to do the same on the other side. Once again seeing no way out, John steeled himself to cooperate, at least for the present. He dreaded the direction this was heading. Vernara wiped the blade on the sheets and re-sheathed her knife.

After he lifted his hips, Vernara slipped the pillow right under the small of his back, tilting his butt off the bed. The restraints pulled harder on his limbs. As she adjusted his position, she pried his legs apart as far as they would go within the confines of the shackles and the discarded briefs. He felt incredibly vulnerable. He was certain that his face must be as red as a tomato. His heart raced loudly in his chest—he ground his teeth to steady himself.  

Vernara removed a metal flask and some other objects from the pouch she had just brought over. She placed the flask and something else in the space between his legs, where he couldn’t see. Trying to get a reaction out of him, she showed him a silver four-inch long bulbous rod, seemingly made of a couple of golf-sized balls and several progressively smaller spheres fused together. A T-shaped metal handle flared out from the widest end. She laid the rod on his crotch, right next to his now flaccid member, as if she wanted to compare the two. The metal felt cold and ominously heavy on his skin. Dread rose in his gut.

Next, she showed him what looked like a miniature dog muzzle. His eyes opened wide in shock at the sight of the triple-ring black leather gizmo decorated with smooth rounded studs.

“Wait!” John gasped. He could not believe that this was going to happen to him. At this point he would rather face a Wraith Queen than this sadistic human. Somehow with his unbelievable bad luck, he had become the unpaid, forcefully conscripted star attraction in a hard-core porn movie. He again strained to get free of the restraints.

Ignoring his protest, Vernara briskly imprisoned him in the contraption. “I like the way this harness looks on your manhood,” she help up her work to admire it. “It also serves a very practical purpose.”

“I really don’t want to know,” he said.

From the flask, she poured onto the palm of her hand a generous amount of an oily, pale-gold liquid. It smelled like a strange mix of aloe and mint. She gripped him and massaged the oil all over his length, in and around the harness. A warming tingling sensation spread in the area. Outwardly stoically silent, he screamed obscenities in his head.  

Vernara picked up the metal rod and lubricated it with the oil remaining in her palm. John tried to squirm away when she used it to probe his crease.

“If you do not fight this, you might enjoy it. Or at least it will hurt less,” Vernara said in a sultry tone before penetrating him with the metal rod. A sharp burning sensation tore a gruff moan from his lips. With her other hand, she held him down so he couldn’t jerk away. Without giving his body more than a few seconds to adjust, she twisted the rod.

“What the hell are you doing?” John gasped. “Oh, Vernara, a beautiful woman like you shouldn’t have to stoop to this to get her jollies.”

“This will make you ready for me,” she said while pushing the rod deeper. John had never felt anything like it. Most disturbing, despite the pain, the internal pressure triggered the growth of his erection. “See? My dear colonel, now you will give me great pleasure.”  

He could not believe that he was being sodomized and that this was happening at the hands of a woman. Not that he would have accepted it any better if it had been a man. He was appalled that despite his utter discomfort and total lack of sexual arousal, he could feel his biggest boner ever. The torturous combination of a strange oil, the strategically placed rod and the tight leather collars had stripped him of any control.

In one swift motion, Vernara pulled off her gown to reveal her completely naked body. She was muscular and voluptuous, not fat but far from trim. Once more she straddled him. Lowering her full breasts to his chest, she slithered against him, slowly moving up and down. After a nibble to his lower lip, her tongue invaded his mouth. John resisted the urge to bite her. He knew that would make her furious, which would lead him to be even worse off than his present already dire situation.

Her oral attack moved onto his neck as her body slid down his torso. Her legs parted wide when her wet folds met his erection. She rubbed herself against the studs of the collars. Then, tilting her pelvis she reached with one hand behind to repeatedly smash him into the crease of her buttocks. John groaned.

“You like that don’t you, John?” Vernara rose to her knees. Supporting her body with one hand, she used the other to rub him against her entrance.

“No, this is definitely not my idea of fun,” John whispered as Vernara slowly sank down, engulfing him to the hilt. In a swiveling motion, she ground herself into his groin. The hairless skin to skin contact maximized all sensations. Tightly grasping his hips with both hands, she positioned him to rub her most sensitive spot against the studs decorating the tops of the triple collars.  

Through the rod penetrating him, her gyrations transmitted painful shockwaves throughout his core. Despite the incredibly uncomfortable situation, John could not help but be aware that he remained hard as steel, his swollen tissue stretching the confines of the binding leather rings. It mostly hurt like hell, but there was a tiny, somewhat sickening undercurrent of pleasure. He sincerely hoped that he was not developing masochistic tendencies.

He felt the clench and release of her inner muscles, as she repeatedly buried his body into hers. The forceful pounding caused pain to radiate from his hips, through his sore ribs and outwards to his overly stretched limbs. His injured arm felt like it was slowly roasting over a fire pit. He closed his eyes to at least escape the image of her relentlessly riding him, her body glistening with sweat, bouncing boobs with enormously erect nipples pointing at him.

His meandering thoughts stopped as he felt her hand ominously move to his neck, fingers pressing down onto his trachea. She was chocking him.

“Do not close your eyes again,” she hissed.

His eyes sprang open and once again he futilely fought against the restraints. She continued to press, making him gasp for any little bit of air. He forced himself to lay still.

“That’s better,” said Vernara, releasing her hold. “I have never seen such pretty eyes in a man. I like how they change color from a light green flecked with gold to a rich brown, as you move between pleasure and pain.”

Unimpressed by her poetic ramblings, John tried to breathe through the jarring caused by her violent pounding. Repeatedly, she slowly rose up so that he was almost out of her and then she slammed down. He felt as if he was being skewered—which, in effect, he was. Uncharacteristically obedient, he kept his eyes open, staring at the wood beams that traversed the ceiling. Forever stubborn, even in this most humiliating of situations, he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing another moan or any other sound escape his lips.

He willed himself to stop thinking about what she was doing and furiously tried to come up with a plan to escape. In quick succession he had to discard one preposterous idea after another. His only real option would have been to talk her into freeing him before she started getting into it. Clearly that train had left the station a very long time ago and most likely it had never been there. For whatever demented reason, she had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get him there. He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that thought. He imagined that if McKay ever found out about his latest predicament, he would twist it into Captain Kirk jokes. Even though they both knew this had never happened to Captain Kirk. For a second his mind wandered to thinking about McKay and what could be happening to him in the hands of the Wraith. What was happening to himself was a crazy waste of precious time—he had to get out of Vernara’s clutches and get back to work on McKay’s rescue.

But for now, John had to accept that he truly had no way to stop what was happening to him. This assault, this…this—he could barely formulate the word in his head—this rape. For the first time ever, he wished he could pass out on command. He so wanted this to be over with.

Unable to make himself faint (and he would gladly call it that if it were to happen), John started reassuring himself that he just had to hold on until his team came. We don’t leave anyone behind and all that jazz. But then he had a horrid thought. Could he really stand the humiliation of having Teyla and Ronon see him tied up and used like this? Surely his ego should be able to withstand that better than suffering through more of Vernara’s perversions? What a dilemma. Anyway, he didn’t think that they were going to find him anytime soon.

Panting heavily, Vernara arched her back and quickened her rhythm. Lost in her own world of pleasure, her hands frantically roamed his chest, indiscriminately scratching and caressing him. Finally, she barely suppressed a scream of pleasure as her body quivered multiple times. Her hair fell forward to curtain them as she rested her forehead against his. He could feel the little tremors still vibrating within her core.

Brimming with a weary all-encompassing pain and a deep sense of shame, he remained perfectly still. He hoped that she was done with him but feared that her sexual appetite had not been exhausted. He suspected that her attention would be inevitably rekindled by the still perfectly stiff part of him trapped within her. 


	3. Chapter 3

A few moments later Vernara started rocking her body again. She reached for the pillows beneath his head and pulled them further underneath him to raise his upper body as much as the restraints would allow. John hissed in pain when the wrist restraints dug into him. She obviously didn’t really care if his wrists started bleeding.

“Now John, you are going to pleasure me with your mouth,” she said, her face inches away from his. “Be forewarned, if you try to bite me, I will cut off one of your fingers. After all, they are not doing me much good.”

She arched her back and presented her right breast to his lips. With her other hand behind his neck, she pushed him toward the eager nipple. He hesitated for a moment and then opened his mouth and dutifully began to do what she had asked. He had weighed the risks and potential benefits of biting her and decided that he had too much to lose. Deep down he also knew that he had not yet reached the point of despair that would allow him to bite a woman’s breast, no matter what evil things she was doing to him. He wondered what McKay would think about that, if he ever found out. Would it be more fuel to feed his endless Captain Kirk innuendo? Come to think of it, this whole scenario should blow those jokes out of the water. Not that he could imagine himself ever talking about this experience to anybody, especially McKay.  

Unlike the hard ride that Vernara had put him through before, this time her movements were shallower and more circular. She ground into him as she maximized the contact with his body. While one hand held his face into her breast, the fingers of the other combed through and occasionally grasped his hair. He tried to imagine that the rather well formed breast belonged to a lover and not a rapist—that didn’t work. Trying to be pragmatic, he hoped that pleasing her like this might earn him some slack that he could take advantage of later on.

Not soon enough for him, she sighed with pleasure and shuddered into another one of her multi-peak orgasms. Women’s bodies were amazing the way they could do that, John couldn’t help himself from thinking.

She released his head, allowing him to wearily lean back onto the pillow. To his string of aches and pains, he could now add a very sore neck. Exhausted, he desperately wanted to curl up somewhere warm and fall into a pain-killer induced oblivion. At that moment, the chasm between fantasy and reality seemed as wide as the distance between Pegasus and the Milky Way.

“When you are not talking, you can do marvelous things with your mouth,” she said. “I will find some other uses for that talent in the future.”

“I am definitely not looking forward to that,” he could not stop himself from saying. He grimaced in pain when Vernara put pressure on his shoulders as she dismounted him.

“How lovely, ” her eyes where fixed on his crotch with great interest. “My dear colonel, you are still standing at attention for me. I simply must do something about it.”

“No. No, that’s really not necessary,” he said, not comprehending how his erection had lasted through all the abuse and perverse stimulation. “This should be all about you.”

“I insist,” she said kneeling next to him. Starting from his hips, she caressed her way down until she reached his fifth appendage. Grasping it at its base, she slowly slid her hand up. The pressure she applied on the leather harness and the firm flesh entrapped by it caused pain, not pleasure, to radiate up his spine.

Vernara thumbed and stroked the top, spreading around the liquid released during her previous exercises. Then she applied her mouth to it. Unexpectedly it felt good, at least until her other hand slipped between his legs and grasped the handle sticking out of his rear end. She pumped the rod in and out with the same rhythm as her mouth. He gasped at the jarring pain which overrode any sense of pleasure he might have felt from her oral maneuvers.

Jaw clamped-tight, so as not to utter any other sounds, his eyes were moist with tears when his fluids spurt into her mouth. Worst blow-job ever, he thought.

She released him and sat down on his hips. Vernara leaned forward and grabbed his jaw forcing him to open his lips. She held him and kissed him deeply, making him taste both of their juices, which mingled nauseatingly on her mouth and tongue. As he tried to push her out of his mouth, she nicked his lip, drawing blood. He fought down his rising gorge and welcomed the taste of copper that overpowered that of sex.

“I am glad you still have some fight in you, John,” she said, wiping her lips. “I do enjoy it. Next time I make love to you, it will be even better.”

“I wouldn’t call this love making,” he said with steel despite the raspy sound of his voice. Fury at her boiled under his feigned nonchalance. “And there won’t be a next time.”

She slapped him backhanded across the cheek. He didn’t flinch. An angry red bruise formed instantaneously.  

“Think what you will but I assure you that you are not getting away from me.” She slid down to his legs and petted the hairless area, clearly hoping that he would react. John didn’t.

“I would love to spend some more time with you right now, but I do have matters to attend to.” Vernara brusquely removed the leather rings. He grunted once when she took her time twisting out the tool she had used to penetrate him.

She went to a nearby basin and washed herself with perfumed cloths. She put her clothes back on and brushed her hair. She returned to his side with another small pile of white cloths and a basin of scented water. Starting with his face, she wiped him down to remove, or at least dampen, the strong smell of sex that emanated from his body. John felt like a horse being groomed after a hard day’s ride. She noticed the blood stains on the rags.

“I could tell from the way you reacted that you have never been taken this way.” She said with glee looking at his silent, embarrassed expression. After caressing his buttocks in a proprietary manner, she removed the pillow from under his back. “I am glad that I was your first.”

He didn’t say another word but he cooperated when she pulled his briefs back up to his hips.

“I wouldn’t want to give my guard any ideas,” she said, taking her time adjusting him. “When I tire of you, I am going to let them have you any way they want. But not yet, I do not like to share.”

Soon after Vernara called out, three muscular guards walked into the room. She ordered them to take her captive to the holding cell.

“I am warning you, do not play with him like you do with the new recruits in the barracks,” she glared at all three. “Or I’ll have you all whipped until your back is raw.” 

“Now you want to save my virtue,” John couldn’t stop himself from saying. “I am really touched, Vernara.”

She strode back to the bed. She caressed his cheek and forced a lingering kiss on his mouth.

“I like your sense of your humor, John.” Her fingers trailed down his torso, until her hand stopped to cup him. “I am looking forward to tonight.”

As he stifled his reaction to once again being manhandled, John realized that he had definitely lost that round of lame repartees.

Once she left the room, the guards snickered and made supposedly witty obscene remarks as they very cautiously untied John’s hands and made him sit up to retie them behind his back. He had been stretched out and pounded on for so long that his muscles felt like jelly. Their precautions while flattering, if extremely (and purposely) painful, were really not necessary since he currently did not have the strength or dexterity to fight anyone.

One of the guards, a ponderous guy with oily dirty-blond hair, took his time to paw him in a few very tender places with the excuse of holding him down as the others adjusted the bindings. Having resigned himself to ignore him for the moment, John memorized the layout of the dark paneled room. There were no windows, solidifying his suspicion that they were underground. A large lit fireplace took up most of one wall. Two matching night stands flanked the high king-sized poster bed, a massive six-column thing with two columns at the head and four at the foot. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite the bed, presumably to give Vernara a good rear view of her sexual shenanigans. A chest of drawers and a wardrobe flanked the mirror. A folding screen stood in one corner of the room (maybe hiding whatever passed for toilet facilities on this planet) and next to the door there was a side table occupied by a washbasin, a smaller mirror and various bottles, jars and other knickknacks. Reflected on the mirror, John could see a low backless divan set flush at the bottom of the bed, with the bed being about a foot higher. He had never seen so much opulent furniture in a single room in Pegasus. He wondered what made Vernara so much wealthier than most humans he had met in this galaxy.

The guards blindfolded him before they untied his ankles and pulled him off the bed. He choked off moans from the strain on his injured arm and thoroughly pounded body. The sudden change in position made him dizzy. His legs wobbled and the guard on each side of him tightened the grips on his biceps to hold him steady. Too bad he was not really faking being so weak because that could have been an excellent start for an escape plan. Whatever the next steps in the plan would be, he didn’t have a clue right now.

They marched him down several corridors, without encountering any stairs. Shaky from his hours with Vernara, John could not keep track of the number of turns they made, but he had a sneaky suspicion that they somehow ended up not far from where they started. He purposely stumbled a few times, trying to touch the walls to feel anything that he might be able to identify later. All he got for that were scratches on his bare shoulders from the uneven walls, probably stone, and a hard smack on the head from one of the guards.

“Stop being such a weakling,” the man growled. “You better man up or you won’t last another encounter with the mistress.”

Then, he heard the creak of a heavy door. His bare feet felt a stone threshold. A musty smell hit his nostrils and a damp chill triggered goose bumps on his arms—pretty much a cliché of a prison but without the usual stink and vermin, he hoped. After escorting him a couple of steps in, someone shoved him the rest of the way. No matter what planet, goons were so predictable. He thought that he was going to slam on the floor. Instead, he landed face-down on a thin mattress, shins hitting the metal edge of a cot. Pressing a knee into his lower back to hold him down, one of the guards stroked his ass.

“Hey, your boss said no funny stuff,” John said, in a tone that was not as firm as he had intended. “She sounded pretty serious about the whipping, boys.”

“Just checking for weapons,” said the guard, running one hand into the crease outlined by the snug briefs and then down between his legs to feel him up. “Nope, nothing here.”

“Are you sure? Let me check, ” said a voice that sounded like the slimy-haired guard. He stepped between John’s legs and forced them further apart. He performed an even more intimate survey. Willing himself not to react, John felt several calloused fingers pull down his underwear to prod and squeeze his over-tenderized parts. “You are right, my friend, definitely no dangerous weapons here but lots of baby smooth skin.”

“Everybody is a comedian,” John mumbled into the mattress. To distract himself from the very uncomfortable situation, he decided to henceforth refer to them as the three stooges. The Slimy hair guy being definitely Larry; between the other two he wasn’t sure who should be Curly and Moe. He hadn’t had a chance to see them very well before they blindfolded him.

The security inspection concluded, one of the comedians loosened John’s wrist bindings without untying them completely. They left and noisily secured the door.

John had to struggle for a few minutes to free his wrists. Sensing that he was alone in the room, he felt free to curse and hiss at the pain to his arms, shoulders and wrists. After he slipped off the blindfold, he pulled up his underwear and gingerly pushed himself to a semi-sitting position. Light from the hallway filtered through the grate positioned at eye-level in the door, dimly illuminating the small cell. The end of the cot, which was jammed against one wall, ended a few feet directly in front of the door. The mattress was covered by a worn but clean sheet and a single blanket. A covered pail and a wood bowl filled with water stood on the floor against the opposite wall.

The pain caused by the simple act of sitting inexorably reminded John of what had happened to him. He rubbed his face as flashes of Vernara’s assault bombarded his brain. A bone chilling cold enveloped him. Shivering, John wrapped himself in the blanket as best as he could. He tried to swallow saliva to hold down the urge to vomit but his throat was too dry. He barely managed to uncover the bucket before spewing out what little he had in his stomach. Emptying out his guts certainly didn’t help his ribs.

The water in the bowl seemed clean, so he took a tentative cupful to rinse his mouth and spit into the bucket. After a few more rinses, he drank some water and splashed his face to clear up his head. He wanted to curl up on his side to gather up some strength and make a plan, even though looking around there didn’t seem to be much to base a plan on.

He had to face the hard facts. He had just been raped and been forced to do things, intimate personal things, with a person that repulsed him. Worse still, despite his bravado in Vernara’s presence, he really was not sure that he could prevent it from happening again. He knew his people would do everything to find him, but he also knew that his kidnappers had dragged him through at least one Stargate and quite likely more. It would take a long time for his friends to find him, if they could at all. John realized that he had to rescue himself. He had to bid his time for the right moment to escape and not get caught before reaching the Stargate—wherever that was. And somehow in this vague escape plan he had to also find some clothes and boots.

 _I can handle this. I should be able to handle this. I have to be handle this,_ he repeated to himself _. I am a grown man, for heaven’s sake, a trained soldier not a teenage virgin._ He tried to convince himself that this shouldn’t be any worse than the beatings, torture and Wraith feedings he had endured. That seemed logical but, somehow, it still felt so much more personal and degrading. But despite his sorry state and current lack of options, deep down within himself he harbored a certainty that if could escape a hive and the clutches of a Wraith queen, he would be able to escape from this woman. Eventually worn out, he dozed off.


	4. Chapter 4

John woke up with the urgent need to relieve himself. When he used the bucket everything hurt, but he was glad that there was no blood and that his plumbing worked.

He explored his prison thoroughly, finding nothing that could help him learn where he was, what time it was and how the hell to get out of there. He had paced the room several more times, when the door swung open. Larry and Moe pushed him to the corner next to the slop bucket, while Curly brought in a tray and set it on the cot.

“You better eat,” he said. “The mistress does not like to hear stomach grumbles from her bed warmers.”

“And you know that from personal experience?” John snapped back.

“Funny man, aren’t you? You’ll soon lose that sense of humor,” Curly replied pointing to a jar on the tray. “Here is a present from her. You better use that stuff on your cock and ass. Or you will never be able to sit again after what she has planned for you tonight.”

Larry grabbed John by the bandaged arm and slammed him against the wall, pressing his body into him. John stifled a cry of agony. Once again, his briefs got pulled down. That game had gotten really old fast.

“You better watch your mouth pretty boy,” Larry hissed into his ear while grinding his pelvis into John’s bared front. “The mistress will tire of you soon and then you will be at our mercy.”

When Larry released him, John slid to the floor, dizzy from the bump to the back of his skull. Larry and Moe backed out of the door and locked it. One handed, he once again re-adjusted his underwear. Then, he clutched his right arm tight against his body. Fresh blood stained the already not so white bandages.

It took a few minutes for John to get the pain down to a manageable level so that he could stand up and inspect the contents of the tray. A clean cloth covered a good-sized bowl of stew. He poked at it with the spoon (the only utensil that had been provided)—it looked like a bunch of root vegetables and some sort of grain in a dark broth. It didn’t smell too bad and the chunk of bread next to it seemed fairly fresh.

He pondered if the food was drugged or if the three stooges had spit in it. The later seemed the most likely possibility. But there wasn’t a choice, he knew that he had to eat something or he would become too weak to make his escape. It was difficult to feed himself without spilling everything, while sitting on the cot at a weird angle to minimize the pain in his butt and other parts. He made himself finish all of the stew and bread. The food and water seemed to settle in his stomach okay. A relief since he definitely wanted to avoid throwing up in the bucket again. Despite the cover, the cell smelled incredibly foul. He didn’t think that the three stooges would be providing room service anytime soon.

The door swung open again while he contemplated what to do with the ointment jar. He stared in surprise as a young woman slipped into the room. In Earth years, she looked to be in her late teens or early twenties. Fairly tall, probably only five inches shorter than him, she wore a short-sleeve pale blue shift that went down to mid-calf. A kerchief held back her shoulder-length light brown hair. She carried an empty slop bucket in one hand and a wicker basket in the other. The door immediately slammed shut behind her.

“Hey bed-warmer, the mistress sent Kharla to tend to your booboos,” Larry’s mocking voice resounded from the other side of the door. “You can threaten or hurt her all you want, but you are not going to get out of this cell.”

“Not funny Hobson,” Kharla said, not loud enough to be heard in the hallway. She set down the bucket and eyed John carefully, as if to determine his intentions towards her.

“I… I am not going to hurt you. I am not a creep like Lar…Hobson,” John said as he adjusted the blanket to make sure it covered his middle. He felt way under-dressed to be in the company of anybody, especially somebody who looked young enough to be his daughter, if he had not been so careful about not spilling his seed from the first time he had sex. He felt mortified by his lack of clothes, the smell of vomit mingled with piss and his utter discomfort in very intimate places.

Kharla seemed to have decided that he was not a threat. She placed the basket on the cot, and moved the tray to the floor next to the door.

“I’ll take this and the old bucket out when I am done,” she said. “Let me see your arm, I need to change the bandage and check the stitches.”

John re-arranged the blanket toga-style so that she could have access to his arm. She very gently unwrapped the bandage. It only stung when she pulled off the last couple of layers because of the coagulated and fresh blood sticking to it. The wound didn’t look so bad considering the attention it had received from the three stooges and Vernara. Only a couple of stiches had been pulled and the rest seemed to be holding in place. The surrounding flesh was definitely red and very tender, but there was no pus.

“Were you the one who stitched it up?” asked John. When she nodded, he added. “Thank you, Kharla.”

“It’s not long, but it is quite deep,” Kharla said. “I have to clean it again. Sorry but it’s going to hurt.”

“Okay,” he said swallowing hard. “Go ahead, I am ready.”

John managed to stay still and barely let out a whimper, while she dabbed the wound with a clean cloth and a liquid that definitely stung like alcohol. That certainly made him momentarily forget his other pains and aches. He tried to distract himself by looking away. Immediately, the basket captured his attention.

“There is nothing in there that you can use as a weapon,” said Kharla, apparently reading his mind. “Before they let me in here, they took away my needles and scissors and the other sharp things I use to take care of the injured.”

“Is that your job here? You are a healer?” he asked. He needed to collect any scrap of information he could. Kharla was the first person who had actually talked to him as a human being.

She seemed startled by the question. “It is one of my many duties. I…  as a bonded servant I have to do my mistress’ bidding.”

“I understand,” he said trying to convey that he didn’t hold her responsible for his situation. “You are so young. I am so sorry.”

Her large brown eyes met his and, for a brief moment, seemed entranced. She blinked as if to steel herself away from staring at him. “I am not that young anymore, I have been a woman for five years.”

Well, okay…  he certainly didn’t need to know that, but at least she was talking to him. He took that as progress. She poured a little more antiseptic liquid on the wound, holding his arm so he wouldn’t pull it away. John held his breath to stop the scream that wanted to come out. He exhaled slowly.

“Can… can you tell me what planet this is?” he whispered, looking at the door to see if anyone was spying on them through the grate. “And what time of the day it is, please?”

She kept quiet while she continued the painful procedure. When she started wrapping fresh bandages on the wound she leaned forward as if to examine it carefully.

“This is Khamala Prime and it’s midday,” she spoke softly. Then she picked up the jar that was on the cot and added more loudly. “You must apply this ointment to your manhood and… and other parts. It will reduce the swelling and discomfort.”

John felt his face turn beet red, “Thank you again.”

Blocking out the laughter from the three stooges in the hallway, he wracked his brain trying to remember if he had ever heard of Khamal Prime before. He hadn’t. The knowledge that it was midday here was really not that useful because of planet time-lags, but it made him feel a little better to know what was going on outside his windowless prison. He did want to try to figure out how much time had elapsed since his kidnapping. It had been late morning when he had been shot at the market. From the near absence of beard stubble on his face, he thought that less than half a day had passed, if that much.

But then he remember that someone might have shaved his face while he was unconscious, just as easily as other parts of his body had been depilated. For all he knew, he might have lost a day or more. Ronon, Teyla and many others were looking for him, diverting personnel and resources from the search for McKay. They had to get Rodney back ASAP because he was their friend and because he was a serious threat to Atlantis while he was under the influence of the Wraith. John absolutely had to find a way out of here quickly. He had no time to be somebody’s boytoy—this whole situation was insane.

Finished with the bindings, Kharla moved away to pack up the basket with her supplies. She placed a stack of unused cloths on the cot. 

“You will need these a little later when you cramp,” she said sounding embarrassed. “The mistress likes her bed companions to be thoroughly cleansed so she had Cook add some cossan fruit pulp to the stew. The cramps in your gut will be painful but won’t last too long.”

Those few simple statements packed a lot of disturbing information for John to process. _What the hell was cossan fruit? it sounded like some sort of prune_ , he thought. _Double crap, just what I need._ Ever practical, he picked on the things that might be more useful in the long-run, “Bed companions you said. Have there been others, uhm… used like me?”

“Yes, the mistress receives one or two every month,” Kharla’s eyes were shiny with sorrow. She picked up her basket. “I must go now.”

“Please one more question,” he said barely above a whisper. He actually had many questions but didn’t want to get her into trouble. The guards were certainly monitoring their conversation. “What happened to the others?”

“When she tires of them, she either sells them to off-worlders or has them killed.” Kharla kept her eyes downcast as she spoke. She patted his hand before moving away to collect the used slop bucket. As she exited the chamber, she added, “you should get some rest before you start to feel ill.”

Even though he hadn’t noticed anyone peering through the grates of the door, John made sure that the blanket covered him thoroughly as he dutifully applied the ointment. The soothing cooling sensation provided quick relief to all the sore areas. Carson would have been both proud and surprised that for once he had so diligently followed medical advice.

Despite feeling a bit better physically, John had a hard time getting any rest while anticipating a bout of diarrhea to start any time and many worse things after that. He lay on the cot staring at the ceiling. He was so tired that he couldn’t hold a thought steady enough to make any sense, his brain jumped from one anxiety-inducing worry to another.

Finally, his mind drifted off to Teyla. In the past few months, as they had been desperately searching for Rodney, they had manage to steal some time together, mostly at night. He had at first been hesitant to make love to her with Torren sleeping in the same room, but the child slept soundly and Teyla made it clear that this was perfectly normal for Athosians accustomed to sharing tents with extended families. Still though, he felt much less inhibited when Torren stayed in New Athos with Kanaan. But then he missed Torren’s impish voice calling him, “Da.” Maybe when he got back to Atlantis, they could find some larger quarters to share together, if Teyla would agree. With those pleasant thoughts, he fell asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

This time he got woken up by horrendous cramps. Aching like an old man, John made his way to the bucket. As Kharla had warned him, his guts underwent a most painful but relatively quick purging. Disgusted, he wiped himself clean as best as he could with the water remaining in the bowl and the cloths she had left him. He was so grateful for such a small act of kindness. He was not usually the trusting type, but he was certain that he had found an ally in her, powerless as she was. But who was he to judge?  He had become an actual bona fide sex slave. A bonded servant must be a step above that, he thought. He resolved to find a way to help her and himself without putting her in danger.

He closed the lid and placed the bucket as far away from the cot as possible. His throat parched, he felt weak and shivery. While the cell smelled like a sewer, he dreaded the time when the guards would come to take him away. Knowing that realistically any chance of escape would come only when he was outside of the cell didn’t help him much to accept his inevitably rather dismal future.

Soon enough, the door opened and the room became filled by relentless scatological jokes and other asinine comments. Feeling weak from his bout with the cossan, John didn’t snap back or put up a fight as they again restrained, gagged and blindfolded him. This time they tied a separate length of rope around each wrist. Then, they made him cross his arms in front and they tied the two ropes together at his back like a straightjacket.

He noticed that there was nothing makeshift about both the blindfold and the gag, they felt like they had specifically been made for those purposes. While the blindfold was surprisingly comfortable, like a completely light-proof sleep mask, the leather ball gag wasn’t, but at least he could breathe okay through both mouth and nose. Way to be positive, John congratulated himself. On the darker side though, it seemed that Lady Vernara had all kinds of equipment to handle her captives. What kind of person would do this routinely to get her sexual jollies?

He had no idea if anyone else witnessed him being paraded down a corridor wearing only underwear and trussed up like in an extreme version of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_. The guards pulled him into a room located on the same floor. As soon as the bindings at the waist were released, his hands were pulled apart and tied stretched out at shoulder level.

“Wait, we have to remove his undergarment before you shackle his ankles,” said a woman’s voice. She sounded much older than Kharla. “We mustn’t cut it. The mistress wants us to wash it for re-use.”

“Go ahead Fereida,” was the gruff reply. A bulky arm went around John’s neck. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t fight you on this.”

The woman managed to pull down the briefs, barely touching his skin. Once again mortified, John couldn’t do anything except bite into the gag and comply by stepping out of them. Seconds later his ankles were fettered to the floor, effectively immobilizing him. A strong hand yanked his limbs to make sure that the restraints held tight.

“He is all yours ladies,” said Larry. “Remember that the mistress wants him scoured clean. She has big plans for him.”

“I warn you, do not release any of the bindings,” Moe or Curly added. “He is very dangerous.” He and his two cronies left laughing.

John couldn’t tell how many people were left in the room. He heard the sound of water being poured, objects clattering and feet shuffling around. Then, he felt soft breathing behind him. A rustling cloth touched his back.

“No Kharla,” said Fereida. “Leave the blindfold and gag on. We’ll be in trouble if they check in on us. Come on, let’s get started so we don’t leave the poor soul hanging longer than necessary.”   




“Yes ma’am,” John recognized Kharla’s voice. “We should keep the bandage dry or his wound will get worse. I won’t have time to replace it.”

“That’s fine dear,” Fereida said. “You climb up on the stool and pour the water. He is a tall one.”

“Very handsome too,” said another female voice who sounded a little older than Kharla. “Kharla, what color did you say his eyes were? Brown, green, blue and gold? You were fooling me, weren’t you? How could they possibly be all those different colors?”

“Hush girls,” interrupted Fereida. She then addressed John. “I am sorry about this, young man, but the mistress’s commands cannot be ignored. Our lives and our family’s lives would be in danger, if we did.”

All he could do was nod. There wasn’t any point struggling, that would only prolong the humiliation and get himself and probably also the women in trouble.

The experience kind of reminded John of the sponge bath he had at the Atlantis infirmary, the last time he had been bedridden with serious injuries. Except, of course, for the part about standing shackled, blindfolded and gagged. This was probably the only time, he had ever actually missed those awful hospital gowns. He’s would never again think of them as being that embarrassing to wear despite the stupid ties in the back.

One of the women, probably Kharla John guessed, covered the bandage on his arm with what felt like waxed cloth. They scrubbed him thoroughly from top to bottom, working around the various restraints and not shying away from any nooks or crannies. In a mysterious work of efficiency, even his hair got washed despite the blindfold and gag.

He was so thirsty that he tried to drink the rinse water that was poured on his head. He got some sympathetic comments, when he reacted to the sting of the lye soap on his wrists and all the shallow cuts that Vernara had carved on body. Mercifully, as soon as they finished his middle area, someone hanged a towel around his waist and gently dabbed his abrasions and cuts with a soothing ointment. Possibly the same hands also wrapped bandages around his deeply scraped wrists and ankles.  

“He’s been sick from the cossan. He needs to drink,” Kharla said. “May I please give him some water really quick? I’ll put the gag right back on and he won’t say anything.”

After a moment’s hesitation Fereida agreed, “Quickly now and you, young man, be quiet.”

John nodded in the direction of her voice. He gulped down the water in seconds and stood silently compliant when Kharla retied the gag. He could feel her hands tremble slightly.

“Make sure that it’s as tight as it was before,” Fereida warned. “Let’s finish up now girls. They will be back to get him very soon.”

Using maneuvers that he very much wanted to forget, the three women worked together to dress him. First, they fitted him in some sort of leather jock strap that provided absolutely no coverage. The waistband sat low in the front where it continued down to an inverted leather triangle that lifted and framed his entire package. His face flamed up when feminine hands had to manipulate his bits to adjust the fit. He was grateful that a certain part of him was too tired to react. The front and back part of the waistband were connected by large smooth metal rings, like one of those bikini bottoms that he had enjoyed seeing women wear back on Earth. Pegasus had just spoiled something else for him.

In the back, the waistband widened and was held together by laces, like a mini-corset. “Tighter, the mistress wants it to be quite snug,” Fereida said. They kept their dialogue to a minimum, probably to minimize everybody’s embarrassment.

One of the women had to reach between his legs to grab the three straps that originated from the bottom of the front triangle and crisscrossed underneath him. Two straps were fitted low around his buttocks and looped securely into the rings at each of his sides. The third strap went like a G-string and got knotted into ring attached to the back of the waistband.

Then, they covered the perverted ensemble with knee-length loose cloth pants, held together by ties at the waist and down the sides. The final touch was a vest, also conveniently designed with ties at the shoulders and sides. John wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or worried about finally having these clothes on—on second thought, probably worry would be the more realistic emotion.

The three stooges took charge of him in their now very predictable heavy-handed and loud manner.

“He won’t be in those pretty black pajamas for long,” said Larry as he finished binding John’s hands behind his back.


	6. Chapter 6

It didn’t take the guards long to drag a blindfolded John to what he guessed was Vernara’s chamber of horrors. They forced him to kneel on something. By the feel of it, he assumed it was the cushioned divan he had seen before.

He could not restrain the urge to resist being once again put in restraints. Naturally, it didn’t do him any good. He ended up more battered, without managing to avoid being strung up by the wrist to two columns at the foot of the bed. Somehow, his legs were strapped at the ankle and calves to the sturdy divan. He knew that the bindings gave him very little room to maneuver because the guards had made another tedious and painful production of carefully testing each one.

The men left after only a few quality minutes spent molesting him. This time, their hearts and other parts did not seem that into it—it was as if they were doing it out of habit rather than desire. They were also very careful not to mess up his outfit or damage him in a way that their mistress might notice. In fact, they seemed to be in a terrible hurry to abandon him in the otherwise apparently unoccupied chamber. John had an awful feeling that Vernara’s earlier sampling of him had been just a light appetizer for the main course. He absolutely had to find a way to get out of here.

After another perfunctory and painful attempt to free himself from the restraints, he worked on composing himself for what was to come. Swallowing the little moisture he had in his mouth, he fought down the dread conjured up by his wild speculations of what Vernara might have planned for the evening’s entertainment.

What was happening to him went far beyond the scope of the Air Force SERE training he had undergone before his first deployment to Afghanistan. At that time, that experience had been pure hell. Now in retrospect, it had been nothing compared to being stranded in a war zone on Earth or being picked on by the Wraith, the Asurans and other demented natives in the Pegasus galaxy. All the things he had been taught—giving only name, rank, and serial number; building up anger towards his captors to fuel resistance; fighting sleep deprivation, humiliation, starvation and dehydration—he was good with all that. Too many times already, this training along with his innate stubbornness and high-pain threshold had helped him resist extreme physical and mental torture, especially when the safety of his people or innocent civilians was at stake.

However, SERE and his past experiences had not prepared him for the present scenario. Vernara couldn’t care less about all the sensitive intelligence he could provide. She definitely enjoyed hurting him, but she did not want to break him to gain access to Atlantis or to have her own ATA-powered secret weapon. In fact, John was certain that if he did break Vernara would tire of him and he would become a hand-me-down or a corpse. For now, she literary wanted him for his body to use as a vessel for her kinky sadistic pleasure. Yep, there was plenty of fuel for his anger at his captor. Now he needed not to do anything stupid before his opportunity came to use that rage to get the hell out.

The only plan he had come up to so far was to find a way to get hold of her knife. With that he could cut himself free and fight his way out or die trying, preferably the former. The tricky part was how to get to it in his current immobilized position. He knew that no amount of charm and sweet talking would make Vernara believe that untying him was a good idea. One slim hope he had was that her sexual gyrations might bring the knife within his admittedly extremely limited reach. For now, he just had to somehow endure whatever she concocted.  

He snapped out of his mental rumination when he heard something heavy sliding on the floor. It didn’t sound like the door they had used to enter the room. Maybe Vernara had a secret passage—that would certainly fit the whole crazy-rich-woman-collecting-men-to-be-her-bedroom-toys theme. He hoped that in the near future he would have the opportunity to turn this new knowledge to his advantage. 

“Hello John,” Vernara said. “Oh my, you certainly do look delicious in black.”

Not turning to the sound of her voice, John felt her move to stand behind him. She ran her fingers through his still damp hair before removing the blindfold. He had been in the dark for so long that it took him several blinks to get adjusted to even the dim light of the candles illuminating the room. Instead of romantic, the place looked funereal.

Vernara sat herself at the foot of the bed, her feet resting on the divan and her inner thighs pressing on his hips. Her face was only a few inches above his. Respect for personal space was definitely not her thing. This time, she had her hair contained by a thick braid and she wore a long silky black gown cut in a style similar to the previous one.  

“I am torn between enjoying this quiet time with you or having better access to your luscious mouth.” Her hands traced the line of his lips as she snuggled closer to him. “John, I do hope that you have strong knees because you are going to be in this position for a while.”

After clearly enjoying kissing him despite the ball gag blocking inner access to his mouth, she opted to keep him silent for a while longer. She took her time undressing him. He didn’t know if she did that to annoy him or to titillate herself. Either way, she was pissing him off. Through it all, he refrained from showing any reaction. She unlaced the vest, tossing it on floor. Her mouth and fingers carefully explored the solid flesh underneath, paying special attention to his nipples and well-defined pectoral muscles, before moving to his firm abs. Her hands slid down to the waist, to finger his navel. Before he could control his reflex reaction, John sucked in his stomach and twitched away.

“Are you ticklish John?” she asked in an amused tone.

Her attention moved to the pants, which hung low enough on his hips to reveal the top of the jocks and some of the smooth skin underneath it. With nimble fingers, she worked her way up each side of the legs until the ties at the waist remained the only thing holding up the garment. She got off the bed and kneeled behind him to slip her hands inside the open pant leg slits. She kneaded his buttocks and traced the contours of the jockstrap. He could feel her hot breath on his neck. He focused harder on his passive resistance strategy.

She put one knee on the bench between his folded legs and pressed herself tightly against his back. Her hands roamed around his waist to thoroughly tease his front before circling back to his hips. Next, her fingers simultaneously unlaced both sides of the waistband. John noted her ambidexterity as another probably useless fact about his captor. She tugged away the fabric from between his legs and discarded the clothing.

John willed himself not to react as she spent endless minutes exploring him. She seemed to be hell bent on leaving no square inch of his exposed skin untouched by her fingers, nails, lips, tongue and oh-so-sharp teeth. He felt a tiny bit satisfied when she finally huffed in frustration and pulled the gag out of his mouth leaving it hanging around his neck. Score one for me, he thought knowing that this puny win was pathetic compared with what she had already taken and would undoubtedly continue to take from him.

“You are a fine specimen of male splendor,” she said standing up and walking around him, as if appraising cattle at an auction. “I just can’t decide which way I like you better: vertical like this or stretched out on my bed. But, this position definitely gives me better access to all your sides.”

“Cut the crap Vernara,” said John in an exasperated voice, inwardly cringing for finally letting her get to him. “Just get on with whatever you have planned.”

“My, aren’t you the impatient one, John.” She raised her eyebrows in mock shock. “First, let me get you some water. I don’t like the feel of dry lips.”

John looked at her with suspicion when she offered a cup to his mouth. He had seen her pour it from a porcelain pitcher set on the dressing table.

“It’s just water,” she said taking a generous sip. “I am not in the habit of poisoning my lovers.”

Deciding not to comment on the misuse of the word ‘lovers,’ he took a sip and then drank more when he detected no foreign taste in the plain water. He was in no position to be finicky.

When she returned from putting the cup back next to the pitcher, she held in her hands what John now recognized as her infamous bag of sexual implements.

“As you so crudely asked. Let’s get on with the fun.” She opened the bag and began pulling out some awfully familiar items.


	7. Chapter 7

In the next few minutes, Vernara once again fitted John with a studded leather contraption, while making a supposedly witty running commentary that he blocked out. He focused on channeling Teyla’s inner calmness to detach himself from being powerless to stop her handling him like a mannequin. Vernara kept on talking while she slathered his imprisoned part with lubricating oil. He snapped out of his fairly successful meditation to conjure up all sorts of non-sexually stimulating mental images to try to stop the growing erection.

She moved to stand behind him. Knowing what she was going to do did not help him prepare one bit. As she pushed him forward with one hand, he automatically resisted. She loosened the end of his G-string strap and yanked it. His eyes dilated at the pain that blossomed in his crotch.

“Are you really in a position to fight me on this John? Lean forward.” Seeing stars and wanting to curl up into a ball, he complied. Her heavily oiled fingers slid down from the bottom of his tailbone and she entered him.

He gasped. “Why can’t you find men that would willing enjoy doing this with you?”

“That wouldn’t be as much fun. You are too stiff, you really need to relax.”

Without waiting for that to happen, she escalated the assault. He bit his lip to stop himself from crying out. Her probing continued. A twinge of unexpected pleasure lapped around the deeply uncomfortable burning sensation. In response, John’s mindless member stiffened even further.

“That always works,” Vernara said with pride. “Men are so uncomplicated.”

When she removed her fingers, the relief was immense. John knew if wouldn’t last. This time, he tried to prepare himself for her predictable next move by attempting to slacken his muscles. But he just couldn’t. He was too full of anger and anxiety to dissipate the tension that stiffened his abused body. Truthfully, he almost asked her not to do it, but he knew that it would have been no use. Without a doubt, she enjoyed violating him like this. She would delight in ignoring any pleas.

After slathering him with more oil—she seemed pretty much committed to proper toy maintenance—she ruthlessly penetrated him again. This time with a bulbous metal rod. A moan escaped his lips. From his position, he certainly couldn’t tell if it was the same implement she had used before. Regardless, it felt like a hot poker had been rammed into him, just as bad if not worse than the previous time. She climbed back on the bed to sit facing him.

John hadn’t noticed that somewhere along the way, Vernara had lost her robe. A black leather bustier squeezed and uplifted her breasts without covering the nipples. He had the sneaky suspicion that their outfits matched. Since her legs surrounded him, it was very clear that the tong she had on was strategically missing some material.

“The dominatrix outfit really suits you,” he said as flippantly as he could manage. “You would make quite a splash in certain establishments in the world where I come from.”

“Do not mock me,” she backhanded him hard enough to draw a little blood from the corner of his mouth. “I may not understand everything you say, but I am not a fool.”

She shifted her right leg and placed her foot snuggly at the apex of the “V” formed by his kneeling legs. Her toes wiggled to snuggle themselves underneath him. He could see the knife strapped to her leg—it definitely went with the outfit. It was so close and yet stayed unreachable.

She rose up tight against his body so that her crotch was at the level of his mouth. She straddled his left shoulder with her right leg. The bindings of her knife sheath scraped his back. Using one hand to hold herself steady on the canopy crossbeam, she entwined the other hand in his hair and pushed him into her.

“This is a better use for your mouth,” she said. “You will pleasure me to fulfillment. You can easily imagine what will happen if you refuse.”

Again, he really had no choice. He was effectively imprisoned by the various restraints, her leg practically wrapped around his neck and most of her weight pressing down on his knees which, by the way, were positively killing him. Not to mention that she had one foot right where it would hurt the most. In fact, her sharp toenails seemed to have started on that job. He wanted to fight her off, but he knew that once again this was not the right moment. This forced passivity in the face of escalating subjugation was eating away at his soul, bit by bit.

He didn’t know what was worse, being forced to go down on her or being unable to come up with any snarky remarks to throw back at her. He decided that the best approach was to get this over with quickly. Flying, fighting, military strategy and math were not the only areas at which he excelled. Despite the awkward position and the inability to use his fingers to move things along, he soon had her moaning and writhing. He mentally apologized to Teyla for conjuring up the ways he had fantasized he would please her (when and if they ever had some real privacy) as an inspiration for his current forced labor.

When she came with violent exuberance, Vernara screamed his name and almost ripped hair out of his scalp. Thank goodness that for all her horrible faults, she at least maintained reasonable personal hygiene. It could be a lot worse, he imagined—ever the optimist. Regardless, he would pay almost anything for a swig of a bottle of mouthwash right now.

Quickly regaining her composure, she unwrapped her leg from his shoulder and released his hair. In a smooth motion she widened her stance and repositioned her feet to his sides. Holding on to the columns to which his wrists were bound, she slowly lowered herself onto the most attentive part of his body. Once again, almost all her weight pressed down on his bent knees. Her feet moved behind him to press into his butt, rekindling the pain from the ever present invading rod.

“I am sure that the ladies have also complimented you on these other fine skills of yours,” she said holding his slicked-up face. “Now, I suggest that you hold on. This might be a little rough for you.”

Before he could vocalize his next witty reply, she entrapped his mouth with her lips and tongue. Her fingers hooked onto the back straps of his jocks, she began to rock. The pressure on his knees intensified. He grabbed onto to the ropes attached to his wrist in fear of being crippled. She rode him for long time, pumping and rubbing to maximize contact.

Close to her climax, she released his mouth and smashed his face into one of her breasts. The position was causing havoc to his neck. He didn’t wait for her orders to suck her tit (of all the things she had forced him to do so far, this seemed to be the least horrific), he just did it to speed things along. He derived no enjoyment, but he felt himself release into her as she came again and again, loudly and demonstratively. At least the pressure in his dick had finally decreased to a more tolerable level.

She dismounted him and freed his shrunken genitals from their leather bondage. Afraid to look down to check on the damage, he rotated his neck trying to ease the pain radiating from it to both his shoulders and everywhere else in his body. He felt shaky and utterly exhausted.

“Well done John,” she ruffled his hair playfully and then moved away to retrieve her gown. She put it on and, looking at the mirror on top of the dresser, she adjusted her braid. “As a reward, I may let you rest a little before the big surprise I have for you.”

“You are so kind,” he said sarcastically, while frantically thinking that any surprise she had in store could only mean really bad things for him.

“True,” she replied. She then slipped the ball gag back into his mouth and quickly retrieved and replaced the blindfold. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

John had learned to be especially nervous when she moved behind him. This time she started innocuously enough by nuzzling the back of his neck, right below the hairline.

“You know John, I do enjoy some of your witty remarks,” she said in his ear. Her tone turned frigid as she continued, “but your insistent impertinence is not acceptable. I have been too lenient and now I must teach you a lesson.”

He felt her touch his lower back with something that was thin and flexible and (big surprise) felt like leather. As she pressed the point and then the length of the implement on his bare skin, he realized that it was some sort of riding crop or whip. Crap, he thought, I should really learn when to keep my mouth shut.

“Get off your haunches so that I don’t accidentally hit your feet,” she warned him. “You would really not enjoy that.”

Knowing that maintaining his mobility was essential to any escape plans, he took her advice and rose up off his heels. She struck him eight or ten times on the back. The sharp stinging pain accumulated. He bit into the gag to choke off his moans. As he hunched forward, she took a moment to delicately ease out the rod plugging him. He shuddered. Her free hand reached underneath him to find the G-strap which she pulled tight before knotting it to the back of his jocks. Just for good measure, she whipped him a few more times with a slightly more gentle touch. John did not allow a single sound to escape his lips.  

“I’ll stop now because I don’t want to ruin you for my other plans.” She used the whip to lightly trace abstract lines all over his torn back. Then, contradicting herself, she struck him once more with full force. “But mind your tongue, John, or you won’t be able to sit for a very long time.”

Having no choice but to keep his seething thoughts to himself, he took deep breaths to ride through the searing aftershocks of the punishment. She released the straps that had held his calves to the divan and pulled him to a standing position. He did not show how much it hurt to unlock his knees, and then lock them again so he wouldn’t collapse against her. He loathe to touch her in anyway. His ankles were still restrained to something else, maybe the legs of the divan. His mobility was limited to perhaps half a step, and he couldn’t close his legs. He shook and bent them to try to get back some circulation. He did the same to his still bound arms.

He froze when the door opened and Vernara said, “You two, put him in the harness and switch his restrains. Kharla set the tray down on the dresser, you may begin as soon as they are done.”


	8. Chapter 8

_Triple crap_ , those words and worse others reverberated in John’s head. Now, Kharla and two guards—he couldn’t see them, but their pungent smell gave them away—had entered Vernara’s chamber. He fervently hoped that this was only some sort of intermission and that they were not going to stick around for the next act. Vernara’s clipped commands made her sound like she was directing the change of scenery and props at a theater.

Even through the haze of pain and anxiety fogging his senses, John found a smidgen of satisfaction in seeing how the guards were cowered by Vernara. Despite the abundance of fodder for all kinds of crude comments, they held their previously loose tongues while they fitted John with a leather harness. He felt the placement of vertical straps on his shoulders connected to twin horizontal straps around his rib cage, starting below his nipples and ending at midriff. Most of the whip strokes had hit him lower, so their rough handling was not total agony, just darn close. They synched closed the two halves of the harness together by tightly tying the connecting laces at his sides.

As a final ridiculous touch, the bottom laces of the harness were secured to the nearest ring of the jocks. One of the guards took a little extra time doing that, his thick fingers lingering on John’s skin when he pulled each ring away from his hips to pass the laces underneath it and secure them with a series of knots.

In the few moments that no one had hands on him, John had the unsettling impression that multiple pairs of eyes were leering at his body, jammed in the pornographic gladiator costume. He could have sworn that he heard the lustful panting of the men in the room. He kept his chin up, refusing to be cowered by the situation. Inwardly, he seethed with the desire to strangle Vernara and her men for subjecting him to all these humiliations.

“What are you waiting for?” Vernara snapped. “Reposition his arms and secure him to the bed. Now!”

For a second, John thought that this might be his chance to do something. He had been forcing himself to take it all until the right opportunity came. He had convinced himself that he owed it to his people—especially Teyla, Torren and the still missing Rodney—not to fight back until a real chance came up. But the sexual degradation combined with the physical injuries were mounting up to an intolerable level. He absolutely did not want to be repositioned and again secured to anything. He needed to make these people stop laying their hands on him. The pain shooting down his back and up from other places was making it extremely difficult for him to realistically assess his situation. So he let his inner Rodney advise him: _Are you insane? Have all the ropes immobilizing your wrists and ankles also stopped the blood flow to your brain? You are blindfolded and the freaking Force is not going to help you!_

He hated to admit it but Rodney was right (and maybe he was starting to lose it)—It would be suicidal to act now. So his only reaction was a grunt of pain when they untied his injured right arm, yanked it to his side, and tied the rope to the metal ring on his right hip, leaving a few inches of slack. They repeated the process with the other arm. That didn’t hurt as much, at least not physically.

“Get on the sofa,” John recognized Larry’s voice right.

Predictably he got pushed and slammed his shins on the hard wood frame. They forced him to kneel on the divan and bend at the waist until his torso rested on the bed. One guard held him down, while the other tied something to the two hooks in the back of the harness. The ankle restraints were disconnected one at a time and then reconnected somewhere else, maybe the bedframe.

“You may leave now,” said Vernara. “You will receive your reward later.”

After the door shut, John felt his upper body being pulled by the harness. As if things could not get any worse, now he was being handled like a marionette from one of those shows that had freaked him out when he was a kid (not that he had ever admitted that to anyone). His ankles got pulled backwards and apart, making him pitch his body forward. The overall effect was to force him into a doggy-style position, with the weight of his torso resting on the harness instead of his arms. He felt sick to the pit of his stomach.  

“John, this view of you is very tempting. Kharla, remove his blindfold so that we can both enjoy his pretty eyes,” Vernara sounded very eager. “And clean him up while you are there, but be very quick about it.”

Kharla untied the blindfold. John knew that giving him back his sense of sight, while keeping him gagged, was just another way for Vernara’s to try to subjugate him. She wanted to enjoy his reaction as he anticipated each degradation she had planned. Still, to him it was a gift because he needed to see what was going on to make a plan and enact his escape.

Above everything else, Kharla’s continued silent presence sickened him with worry. How did she fit into Vernara’s sadistic sexual fantasies? Was she a willing participant? Was he being naïve if he rejected that possibility? Could she and would she help? Or would she hinder him? Whatever were the answers to these questions, he hated Vernara even more for dragging this young woman into such a torrid situation.

Unaware of being the center of his inner turmoil, Kharla liberally applied ointment to his abused back, treating the cuts, whip marks and other damaged areas without hesitation. She even reached into his most intimate places to apply an ointment which quelled the pain and irritation from the previous abuse. Deeply embarrassed, John cringed despite her light touch, but he held himself still. He concentrated on figuring out the location of possible weapons. Scanning the topography of the bed in front of him without moving his head (he didn’t want to risk Vernara’s attention), he noticed the whip placed not far from his right. The short distance didn’t matter because he had no way of reaching it.

“Good job Kharla,” Vernara said. John could see her clearly now; she had moved by the night stand at the right side of the bed. He did not lower his eyes under the weight of her leering perusal of his body. She smiled and added, “Please now assist Colonel Sheppard in relieving his bladder. I do want him to be comfortable.”

In the next couple of minutes, John was commanded to use a portable urinal that Kharla wordlessly held up. He knew that Vernara was disappointed that he didn’t throw a hissy fit at this newest humiliation. What would have been the point? And anyway, as soon as she had mentioned it, he realized that he really had to go. After all she had already done to him, making him do this in front of them didn’t seem to be that much of an ordeal.

Kharla moved away to dispose of the liquid. Vernara discarded her robe and leather outfit; she picked up the whip and climbed up on the bed. The only thing she still wore was the knife strapped to her leg. She sat on the end of the bed facing him. Given the height difference between the bed and divan, her bare breasts were the main feature in his line of sight. Reaching underneath him, she teased him with the tip of the whip.

“John, I think your mouth has rested enough. You need to silently remind me why I should not cut your tongue off next time you talk out of line.” She emphasized that point by grabbing his chin and tilting his head up to gaze at his eyes.

Once again, John had to dig very deep to control his fury. She was leaning so close that he could have easily hit her with his head, probably smashed her nose. But then what? Even Houdini couldn’t have freed himself from these restraints quickly enough to avoid being whipped senseless by a super-enraged Vernara. He absolutely did not have a death wish. Sure, he would put his life on the line when the lives of his people were at stake. But in this hellish situation, the only life in peril was his and he was not yet prepared to toss it aside before finding a legitimate chance for freedom. He swallowed hard and nodded in agreement, unable or unwilling to mask the rage in his eyes.

“Your eyes have gotten so dark, John. I rather like it. Kharla, dear, please remove his gag and give the colonel a drink before he begins to pleasure me.”

He finally caught a glimpse of Kharla as she approached the bed. Her now loose hair was brushed to a glossy shine and she wore a spaghetti-strap burgundy slip that barely fell to mid-thigh. The way the silky garment hugged her curves betrayed that she was more of a woman than a girl. John expected her to be cowered and subservient in Vernara’s presence. Instead, Kharla moved like a robot in a bad sci-fi movie. He thought that this was too drastic a change in character to be a natural progression from the obedient, but spirited behavior he had seen in his cell.

Standing to his left, Kharla untied the gag and offered him a reed straw stuck into a clear flask. The pale-green liquid smelled fruity and tart. He looked at Kharla hoping for some reassurance about the safety of the drink. Instead, he found an expressionless face, dull eyes looking straight through him as if he were transparent.

“What the hell have you done to her?” he asked Vernara. “She looks drugged.”

“She is not drugged. She is just in the right frame of mind to serve me tonight. Anyway, her welfare is none of your concern. She is my bonded servant.” Vernara raised her whip and struck him on the back to emphasize each of her next commands. “Stop wasting time, John. Drink the kalatra juice; it will quench your thirst and provide some nourishment. It’s going to be a long lovely night for us.”

While she only struck him twice, the pain spread throughout his back, reigniting the throbbing aches caused by the previous flogging. He stilled his facial features so as not to betray how much he hurt.

The beverage tasted like a refreshing cross between lemons and pineapple. As he swallowed it, John realized that he should be hungry, a long time had passed since his last real meal. The combination of cossan purging and sexual and other physical torture were draining him of energy. He needed sustenance to be strong enough to escape. Given the evening’s unfortunate agenda, he didn’t expect to be offered solid food anytime soon. He eyed the proffered drink and hoped that is was some kind of energy drink. After all, Vernara’s sex slave must be strong to keep up with the demands of his master, he thought bitterly.

While he drank, Vernara made herself comfortable with pillows behind her back. As soon as Kharla took the flask away, Vernara draped her right leg over John’s shoulder and rested her left foot on his opposite shoulder. Feeling like a pig eating at a trough, he reprised his matinée performance with a few minor variations. He kept his mind occupied thinking about what might have happened to Kharla. If she hadn’t been drugged then why was she acting like a robot? Could Vernara have a mind control device? What little he had seen of her place didn’t show any technological knowhow, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything in Pegasus. Or could it be some type of hypnosis? More immediately pressing, was there anything he could do to make her snap out of it? It still seemed to him that she might be his best chance to get a hold of Vernara’s knife.

“Kharla, while Sheppard is pleasuring me, please fit him with the ring and stimulate him as I have taught you.” Vernara’s clipped commands made his reeling mind stop in its tracks. “John, you must not get distracted from your task. You know what will happen if you do.”

Fighting the urge to close his legs and squirm away, he kept on with his performance. He wisely thought that Vernara would be particularly vicious with the whip if he stopped now. The latest whip marks stung brutally.   

Silently moving behind him, Kharla expertly fitted him with a thick, wide metal ring so that it lay flush against his denuded skin. The heavy smooth ring didn’t hurt yet, but he felt a disconcerting pressure around the area. A few seconds later, an odd energy suddenly surged within its confines. To his utter dismay and shame, just a couple of strokes from Kharla’s lubricated hand made him as solid as a rock.

 _What the hell?_ With gut-twisting dread, he realized that something else was very wrong. The drink must have been spiked with a superfast-acting version of Viagra. This record-breaking response in a most inhibiting situation had to be unnatural.

Vernara moaned, close to the edge. She shifted so that both of her legs rested over his shoulders. Once again, the knife sheath dug into his aching back. He took advantage of her obscured line of sight to try to loosen his wrist bindings. Besides being extremely painful, twisting his wrists was futile. The ropes felt tighter than before and a warm wetness indicated that he had drawn blood. With no other options, John just persevered with his task to quickly end this part of the ordeal. Vernara’s screams of pleasure were louder than before. After her tremors subsided, she released him.  

“You have done well, John,” she sounded very pleased. She now sat with her feet resting on the divan. Her muscular thighs pressed against his slim hips, enveloping him. Kharla had brought her a tall glass filled with an orange liquid. It had a fruity alcoholic smell. Her mistress drank and waved her away to dispose of the empty container.

“I am so glad,” his voice was thick with sarcasm. He was close to maxing out on the amount of physical and mental anguish he could take. It had become nearly impossible to maintain his nonchalance. His dick throbbed unbearably and the way Vernara had positioned herself it aimed right for her pubis, as if eager to launch.

“The kalatra juice has prepared you very nicely. You must be in such discomfort. Let me help you find relief,” Vernara said in a syrupy voice.

Once again, she forced him to enter her. Her subsequent motions did nothing to relieve his aching parts. As he expected, she took her own sweet time to gyrate and rock to maximally re-stimulate her own clearly insatiable erogenous zones. Then she ordered Kharla to join in on the fun.


	9. Chapter 9

“Kharla, remember the pretty designs I made on Colonel Sheppard’s arm?” Vernara said, barely slowing down. It was amazing how she could switch from heavy panting and moaning, to sounding like a very patient elementary school teacher. “Be a really good girl, take my knife and make the same cuts on the unmarked part of his back.”

At those words, John felt pathetically torn between fear and hope. On the one hand, he dreaded that a weaponized Kharla automaton would attack his already torn-up back while Vernara continued with her punishing frontal assault. On the other hand, a knife held by a barely out of her teens girl instead of a trained Amazon seemed like a tiny ray of sunshine.

Kharla moved so quietly that he did not notice that she was already behind him until the first cut began to split his skin. Cringing, he admonished himself for being so distracted. He had to ignore the escalating pain to come up with a plan to get free. This was his chance—he hoped.

As if reading his mind, Vernara switched her grip from his jocks to his arm restraints. Firmly pulling on the ropes, she effectively immobilized his body chest-to-chest against hers. “Cut very slowly and not too deeply. The tip sunk through the skin is sufficient to ensure that you draw blood with each cut,” she said. “Of course, if the colonel moves the cut will go deeper.”

Kharla leaned into him to make her careful incisions. Her silky slip brushed against his already-torn skin, causing an unexpected shiver. He could hear her low steady breaths. While she remained totally unperturbed by her sadistic act—he could no longer control his trembling. The languorously carved cuts felt like fire ants stinging their way along his back. He felt simultaneously cold and hot, and suffocated by the forced total-body contact with Vernara’s sweaty skin. Her incessant downward circular pressure on his trapped body part had become unbearable. For the second time in less than a day, his eyes moistened with tears.

“Kharla please stop,” he said, trying not to whimper. “You … you don’t want to do this.”

“She can’t hear you, John,” Vernara said between moans of pleasure. She licked the wetness running down his cheeks. “This is wonderful. It feels so good.”

Through misty vision, he saw that Verdana positively glowed with pleasure. The bitch was reaching new heights of arousal by feeding on the agony wracking through his body—like a pain-sucking vampire or, to use a more Pegasus relevant analogy, a human Wraith. Now, on top of everything else, he felt unbearably claustrophobic. _Get her off, get her off,_ his mind shouted even more loudly than before.  

Sunk into a red haze of pain, he was barely conscious when Vernara achieved her culmination. At that point, the one coherent thought he managed to have was to wonder if this woman’s insatiable sexual appetite was natural or artificially induced. What the hell was in her glass?

Next thing he knew, Kharla was offering him a straw to drink. He found himself leaning toward the empty bed, his upper body held up by the harness. Vernara seemed to have disappeared. His back was on fire, and other parts of him throbbed unrelentingly. Lips parched, he took a few sips before he realized that it was more kalantra juice. He spat out what he had not yet swallowed. Kharla wiped his face and set the flask aside. She cleaned the fresh cuts and slightly older whip marks on his back. After the initial atrocious sting, the stuff had amazing powers to dull down the pain. He tried to crane his neck to see where Vernara had gone.

“Kharla, please put the blindfold back on Sheppard,” Vernara’s voice resounded from behind the privacy screen. “It’s time for the big surprise.”

His stomach clenched in apprehension. Crap, the big surprised had not happened yet? How much worse could the day, or night or whatever it was, get? His eyes darted around the bed, trying to remember an important detail. The knife, where was the knife? He fervently hoped that Vernara had not returned it to her sheath. Right before Kharla covered his eyes with the blindfold, he caught a glimpse of a blade tangled in the sheets to his right.

He knew that he had nothing to lose when he whispered to her, “Kharla, please, please help me. If you cut the rope on my right arm and hand me that knife, I can free us. What she is making you do isn’t right. You don’t belong here. Please.”

Kharla synched the knot, relegating him to darkness. Without responding to his plea, she gently wiped the sweat and (yes) tears from his face.

“Kharla, you have to snap out of whatever Vernara did to you.” He continued even more softly. There had to be a way to reach her. “I know from the kindness you showed me before that you wouldn’t willingly hurt anyone. We can get away together. Help me and I will help you. I promise. I just need the knife.”

“Are you enjoying your chat with her, John?” Vernara’s voice from across the room chilled him to the bone.

“Oh yes, she is quite the conversationalist,” he answered having reclaimed an almost casual tone. “You know, we had so much fun already. Maybe you should save the big surprise for tomorrow, to stretch out the festivities.”

“Don’t worry John, I still have plenty more surprises for tomorrow and many days after that,” she said, her voice sounding closer. “Trust me, John. You wouldn’t like it if I ran out of them.”

She ruffled his hair. John’s internal danger detectors went on full alert. The pattern had become clear: playful gestures presaged her most evil acts. Her hands grabbed his shoulders and she yanked him to a kneeling position. The sudden motion made him see stars. As he tried to catch his breath from the pain, her tongue invaded his mouth. She held his face firmly while she suffocated him with an intruding kiss. Then, he felt her pull at something around his neck. For a second, he thought she had decided to strangle him. Instead, she slipped the gag back in his mouth.

“Enough of your talk. Kharla, put the cloths down and take off your slip. You must be very hot, dear. Very good. Now, I want you to spread your legs and move closer to Sheppard. I am going to remove his blindfold so that you will be able to see his pretty eyes.”

John swore in his gag when he saw Kharla sitting on the bed in front of him, legs splayed around him, in the same position Vernara had been not too long ago. He wondered if Kharla had been made to do this before. He remembered what she had said in his cell about having to do her mistress’ bidding because she was a bonded servant. This made him hate Vernara even more. Fueled by his anger, he didn’t feel tired anymore, he had to do something, anything to stop this.

He triplicated his efforts to loosen the wrist bindings and he resisted Vernara’s push to bend him over the girl. He managed to hold her at bay until she dug several fingers into the already reddened bandages on his arm and some of the deeper whip gauges on his back. The gag muffled his scream from the pain explosion that shocked his entire body. He almost passed out. Vernara forced him into a crouch over Kharla. His weight fell forward on his bound hands that he managed to plant on the bed on both sides of Kharla’s waist. Showing great youthful flexibility, she had spread and raised her own knees to perfectly line herself up with him.

Under Vernara’s command, she rubbed herself against him. At the same time, he felt his cleft being disturbingly probed by something slathered in lubricant. If he hadn’t known that Vernara was the only other person in the chamber, he would have thought that a man was preparing to screw him. Great, he was being very unfairly attacked on two fronts.

“Good job, Kharla,” Her voice reminded him of a kindergarten teacher praising a pupil for drawing a pretty picture. “Now dear, make his thick manhood sink into you. You know you want him to be your first.”

Kharla ’s ankles hooked behind his thighs and her fingers grasped the leather of his jocks. She pulled him in. The guided descent was slow. He tensed all his leg and back muscles to resist her. He held her off until a scorching stab impaled him from behind and propelled him forward. The gag muffled his cry of pain. The motion plunged him within the girl despite her tightness.

Something cleared in Kharla’s fogged mind and she cried out. That was the first sound she had made since coming to the chamber. Her eyes, no longer lost and unfocused, were opened wide in pain and terror.

“No. Stop, stop. Please stop,” she said trying to push him off.

He desperately wanted to oblige her, but he had no leverage. His wrists were tied to his sides and his hands couldn’t support him at the forward angle he had been pressed onto. He strained his back and legs but couldn’t get himself off her. Vernara had pinned him between them.

Despite his own pain, John’s main concern was the horrible, most inconceivable thing that was happening between him and Kharla—for all intense and purpose he was raping her. He couldn’t believe that he had been so stupid and self-centered not have considered this possibility. He should have realized what Vernara had in her demented mind and stopped it, by any means necessary, before it got to this point of no return. Momentarily overcome by shame and despair, a few more tears slipped down his cheeks. The salty drops fell on Kharla’s face, mingling with hers.

He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but he couldn’t. Now his first priority had to be to get off her. He finally managed to push the gag partly out of his mouth with his tongue. He tried to tell her to get the knife; his words were garbled as he repeated over and over in her ear, “Gt m knf, pls.”

The message finally got through her panic. While with her left hand she continued to push him off her body, with the other she felt around the sheets for the knife. Even though it cost him a lot, John was grateful that Vernara’s concentrated attack on him kept her too distracted to notice Kharla’s movements. With her full body pressing down on him, Vernara’s left hand gripped his hip and her right arm tightened around his neck, constricting his airway. All he could do for the moment was try to keep as much of his weight off Kharla as possible. Otherwise, their combined masses would crush her or at least break a few ribs.

As Kharla cut the rope, he forced himself not to react when the knife blade repeatedly scraped his right side. They needed to act fast to catch Vernara by surprise. For his part, he had plenty of built-up rage to fuel what he was going to have to do.


	10. Chapter 10

_A few hours earlier on the same day_

Despite being blindfolded, gagged, tightly bound and dressed for the bedroom pleasures of Lady Vernara, Sheppard still managed to emanate an aura of pride and strength. With guilty bitterness churning in her stomach, Kharla watched the guards take him away. She had tended his injuries and helped the other women clean and prepare him as specified by their impossibly hard and strange mistress.

In the two months that she had been in the household, Kharla had previously only caught small glimpses of what the lady did with these men. She felt incredibly foolish for not having questioned how two of her previous male patients had received their injuries. She should have realized that they were not ordinary soldiers from the barracks. Even in their unconscious, disheveled state, those men had also been inordinately handsome and their torn clothing too different from what the locals wore. Now, she knew better. All the preposterous things she had heard whispered by the other servants were true. Vernara had used those two men in the same way she was abusing Sheppard. 

What the lady was doing, what they were all doing helping her, was undeniably wrong. But, she knew that she would never be brave enough to do something to help the man. She was too afraid for herself and for the women who had been kind to her since Lady Vernara had bought her bond and dragged her away from Jenev, her homeworld.

Helpless and hopeless, Kharla resigned herself to continuing to be the obedient servant who cleaned her lady’s messes—even messes that involved torturing and violating captive men. Dutifully, she went to the lady’s study as she had been previously instructed. As soon as she entered the room, heady aromas of burning incense and pungent herbs assaulted her nose and made her dizzy. Lady Vernara told her to sit on a stool. Then, she began to speak in an uncharacteristic patient tone.

“Breathe in these invigorating scents, Kharla,” she said repeatedly. “Let them fill your lungs and clear your mind.”

Kharla couldn’t remember anything about what else the lady had said or done in that room. Afterwards, her arms and legs obeyed the mistress’ commands while her mind stayed trapped in a far corner, somehow unconnected to the rest of her body. Nothing made sense. Nothing mattered. Nothing disturbed her.

Nothing registered through any of her senses, until a heavy weight pressing down on her chest made it hard to breathe. A few warm drops wet her face, like the start of a light summer drizzle. Confused, she wondered how it could be raining inside the lady’s chamber. All her sensations seemed strange and impossibly distant. Her eyes were open but she could not see. Sounds were muffled as if she had stuck wax in her ears.

The barrier that segregated her mind from her body disintegrated completely only when an intense pressured forced a fiery hot pain deep between her legs. Her eyes shot open as she cried out.

The colonel’s eyes loomed inches away from Kharla’s. His face was a mask of sorrow and pain. His tears had been the rain she had felt. He said something but the gag in his mouth made his words unintelligible. Behind him, lady Vernara had her right arm around his neck—the long amazingly strong fingernails of her left hand gripped his hip, drawing blood—while she pushed with her whole body into his back, thrusting him deeper within Kharla. It hurt so much, as if she were being split in half.

“Please stop,” she tried to push him–them off.

And all the memories of what had happened in the past few hours, all that she had done under the lady’s influence, surged back into her consciousness. The sounds and images were overwhelming but the thing that resonated in her despairing mind was Sheppard’s plea for help in getting the knife. Lady Vernara had to be stopped. Kharla had finally reached the limit of what she would submit to. What she had seen of the colonel gave her some hope that he might be her best chance for freedom. In the midst of the pain and the horrible memories of how she had gotten in this position, her mind locked on the need to reach that knife.

She pushed away the vivid images of how she mindlessly carved up Sheppard’s back with it. She couldn’t lose herself in the guilt of that now. Instead, she concentrated her efforts on reaching with her left hand to feel around the sheets where she thought she had dropped the knife when she had been ordered to get the semi-conscious man a drink. She kept her eyes on lady Vernara to make sure that she would not notice her movements. The woman seemed lost in a bestial bliss as she hammered into Sheppard. The reverberations of her wild ride pounded Kharla, despite his effort to hold his body as still as possible. It felt like she was being simultaneously ripped apart and stomped by a wild animal.

Finding the knife on the bed just by touch alone was very difficult. Finally, something sharp nicked her finger. Trying not to cut herself again, she worked her fingers up the blade to reach the carved handle. She hid her movements under her legs, which were spread wide and bent at the knees.

She saw that Vernara had tightened her chokehold on Sheppard. He struggled to breathe as she thrust in and out of him with that unnatural thing she had strapped on top of her womanly mound. The lady’s free hand roamed his body, sliding on the sweat and blood now coating him. She punctuated some of her pushes by biting his shoulders, moaning in pleasure whenever he shuddered or gasped in pain.

The agony in Kharla’s core had dulled to a constant throb, making it easier for her to concentrate on stealthily handling the knife. Unable to see her own hand, she positioned the hilt against her waist and slid it down and up until she felt the knife touch the binding that held Sheppard’s right wrist to his side. She glanced up to confirm that Vernara continued to be distracted. She tried to keep her aim steady as she cut the rope. She slipped a few times, nicking herself and Sheppard. The intense look in his eyes and the garbled sounds he made urged her on.

As soon as she broke through the last filament of rope, Sheppard snatched the knife from her hand. He moved so fast—all Kharla could do was put down her legs to give him room to maneuver. In one smooth motion he stabbed Vernara near her waist, loosening her stranglehold on him. He pulled out of Kharla and cut the rope binding his left hand to his own body. Bleeding and weakly shouting for the guards, Vernara grabbed Sheppard from behind and tried to wrestle the knife from him. He flipped her off his back onto his right side and stilled her movements with his upper body. No longer completely pinned down, Kharla wanted to move out of the way but her left leg was still trapped under Sheppard’s. He covered Vernara’s mouth with one hand to smother her calls for help. She briefly fought back by digging her fingers into his wounded arm. Then she went limp. Her eyes remained open.

Panting to catch his breath, Sheppard moved away from the two women. He pulled off the gag from his mouth and then twisted himself to cut through the ankle and then the harness restraints. Kharla noticed the bloody marks and cuts crisscrossing his ravaged back. The bandage on his arm was once again soaked red. By the speed at which the stain spread she judged that several of her careful stiches had been torn. Seemingly unperturbed by his numerous injuries, he moved around the room with a purpose. From the floor, he grabbed the black garments that Vernara had stripped off him earlier and he quickly retied the sides. He then cut off the leather jocks and harness from his body and put on the pants.

Kharla’s eyes drifted back to Vernara’s lifeless body sprawled next to her on the bed. Blood from the knife wound had pooled on her stomach. Below that, the manhood-shaped wooden abomination stuck out at an angle, the belts holding it in place had shifted in the struggle. Feeling her gorge rise up to her mouth, Kharla rolled off the bed and crouched on the floor to vomit the small amount of food she had eaten that day.

Between heaves, she saw Sheppard cover the body with the bedspread. Eyes averted from her naked form, he handed her some wash cloths and the slip she had been wearing before.

“Kharla, I am so sorry it took me so long to stop her,” she heard the guilt drenching his words. She wanted to let him know that she didn’t, she couldn’t blame him, but she couldn’t find her voice. It had been her own fault or at least her body’s for mindlessly obeying the lady’s commands and doing those cruel things to Sheppard and, in the end, to herself.

He continued speaking softly, “I know what happened is horrible but we don’t have time now. Do you know if the guards are close enough to have heard her?”

At those chilling words, Kharla snapped out of her self-destructive introspection. If her heart had been beating quickly before, now it thumped on overdrive with fear for what would happen if they were caught.

“It’s late at night. Two of her personal guards should be in the back chamber taking their sleep turn,” she said. “Chauncer should be at his post outside in the hallway. The walls and door are thick. Maybe, … maybe he didn’t hear.”

Her optimistic words were proven wrong by a knock on the door. Eyes wide, she looked at John for direction on what to do.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Wait until I get into position next to the door and then tell him to come in,” he said softly. He quietly moved toward the entrance, armed only with Vernara’s knife.


	11. Chapter 11

The events of the next few minutes made it clear to Kharla why Lady Vernara had kept Sheppard restrained and closely guarded by her most experienced (and cruel) men—Hobson and his equally despicable associates, Chauncer and Tantoff. The door had barely opened a hand-span, when in one fluid motion Sheppard pulled Chauncer into the chamber. Despite the guard’s bulkier musculature, it took him only a handful of seconds to overpower and kill the guard with a quick knife stab to the back of the neck. Chauncer slumped to the floor without uttering a sound. Sheppard dragged the body to the far side of the bed, out of sight of the doorway.

“I am sorry you had to see this,” he said. “We have to get out of here. Are there any clothes and footwear around here that we could use? How far away is the ring of the Ancestors?”

Kharla stepped toward the chest of drawers and was about to answer the first question when a heavy hand grabbed her by the shoulder. She felt the sharp edge of a blade pressed against her throat. Tantoff and Hobson had come in from the passage hidden by the folding screen. Tantoff wrapped his arm around her neck and clamped his greasy hand over her mouth. With the knife nicking her throat, she had no choice but to follow his lead and move to the center of the room.

“Put the knife down, pretty man, or my friend is going to slit Kharla’s throat,” Hobson said as he stepped closer to Sheppard. “You don’t want her to bleed to death in front of you, do you? If I remember correctly, when you started sweet talking this fool of a girl into helping you, you said that you are not a creep like us.”

Sheppard tossed the knife on the bed. He held up his hands, “Look, she didn’t help me. I took advantage of a situation to overpower…”

“Shut up,” Hobson said, spit flying from his mouth. “I don’t want to hear another word from you. You are going to do exactly as I say or she dies. Understood? Now, I will wipe that smug expression off your face before we take you to the Alkamade family for their retribution and our reward. Take off those stupid pajamas. Kharla is going to watch while we fuck you proper.”

Sheppard turned to look at her. Tantoff put more pressure on the blade, drawing blood. It hurt but not as much as when Lady Vernara had dribbled hot candle wax on her skin or flogged her to teach her a lesson or just amuse herself. Living in this household had taught Kharla how to handle a good amount of pain. While she feared death, she didn’t want to be a part of any further violation of another person—especially this man who had tried to help her. With an intense look and a slight shake of her head she tried to communicate to him not to submit. He ignored her message.

Sheppard’s dark glare contrasted the flush of his cheeks as he untied the waist strings. The black garment slipped off, pooling at his feet. While he stepped out of it, Hobson rushed him with a two-fisted hit to the chest, slamming him backwards onto the side table. Kharla heard a sharp crack when his head hit the wall. The basin of water spilled and clattered to the floor, joining shattered toiletry jars and other fallen beauty implements. Clearly unconscious, Sheppard lay sprawled on the table, one arm hanging off the edge and the other draped across his chest. Instinctively, she tried to move to help. Tantoff tightened his grip on her mouth and neck. He pushed her forward so that together they stepped closer to the scene.

Hobson yanked at Sheppard’s limbs and hips to reposition him lengthwise on the table, arms stretched above his head. He hurriedly tied the wrists together with the piece of rope that only a few minutes before Sheppard had cut off himself. He then grabbed the slack body by the knees and spread the legs apart, wedging his bulky hips between them. Long, thick fingers reaching behind Sheppard’s hips, he lifted and pulled him to the edge of the table. He fondled and probed the flesh between the man’s legs. Horrified at what she was about to witness, Kharla prayed for Sheppard to wake up—to do something.

“You watch and learn, Kharla,” Hobson said while his hands continued to move relentlessly. “Sooner or later you will get some of this. I don’t really like girls, but I’ll just turn you around and pretend that you are a boy. You need to learn your place.”

“Oh, hurry up, Hobson,” Tantoff practically whined. “I want to have my turn.”

Behind her, Tantoff’s breath hitched when Hobson grabbed Sheppard’s left knee and draped it over his right shoulder. Hands clenched on his victim’s buttocks, Hobson ground himself repeatedly into him, until the front of his trousers seemed ready to burst. When he loosed his belt and reached inside them, Kharla closed her eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

All kinds of thoughts and emotions tumbled around in her mind. She wanted to throw up; she wanted to roll up in a ball and cry; and she wanted to scream in rage at the cruel unfairness of this life. Animals like Hobson, Tantoff and the lady should not be free to treat other people like they were just things to be used for their own urges. Two months earlier, when her bond had been sold to the lady, she had resigned herself to the fate of a servant. She hadn’t minded too much the thought of working hard, believing that in a few years she would be able to buy off her bond. But this was beyond anything she had imagined …

She forced herself to get a grip on her emotions—there was no time for self-pity. This had to be stopped. By the time they would tire of Sheppard, there wouldn’t be much life left in him and then their attention would focus on her. Tantoff and Hobson might not enjoy females, but they had a predilection for hurting and degrading all kinds of people. She knew that they would take their own sweet time before taking them both for retribution. And, from the stories she had heard about the lady’s family, she had no doubt that even more horrible things would come with being brought to their form of justice. There had to be something that she could do. But what? She could not match the guards in strength or fighting skills, but Sheppard could—if he woke up in time and if she provided a distraction.

With a spark of hope she realized that as Tantoff became more and more enthralled by his partner’s noisy activities, his hold on her mouth had loosened. She opened her eyes, hoping to see some trace of awareness in Sheppard. With relief she noted the steady rise and fall of his chest indicating nearly normal breathing. He was probably not yet badly hurt. But his face stayed inanimate as it flopped from side to side when Hobson repositioned him.

Then, she caught a flicker of movement on his features, maybe a grimace, and his pupils darted under closed eyelids. When his body got jerked once more, his eyes sprung open. Their glances met and she silently mouthed, _stop him_. He blinked and came alive. Before Hobson could react, he tightened his legs like a vise around his neck and slammed him sideways into the wall. Then, he raised his arms and torso off the table to grab him by the flap of the jacket with his bound hands. Again, he bashed him against the wall.

Before Tantoff had a chance to cut her with the knife, Kharla bit as hard as she could the hand near her mouth. Bitter tasting warmth squirted into the back of her throat. Fighting down nausea, she jammed her elbow into his stomach and unclenched her teeth to release his now mangled fingers. As the man cursed and lost his hold on her, she flung herself on the bed to get the knife that Sheppard had dropped a few minutes before.

Her fingertips had just grazed its hilt, when an enraged Tantoff grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her back. She furiously kicked to loosen his grip. He wrestled her on the bed, his whole body now mounted on her back, and he used his great weight advantage to immobilize her limbs. 

“You almost bit my fingers off, you little bitch. I am going to make you pay for that,” he hissed behind her ear as he lifted her head by the hair.

With her peripheral vision, she could see the glint of the blade he held in his other hand. His weight on her back was making it hard to breathe. She desperately tried to twist her body and buck him off. It was no use, he was squashing her like an insect. Then, she heard a metallic click.

“Drop the knife and get off her,” Kharla almost didn’t recognize Sheppard’s voice, it sounded so hoarse and icy cold. “Do it now, unless you want me to use your partner’s pistol to blow a hole in the back of your head.”

Tantoff rolled off her back and Kharla could breathe again.

“Are you okay, Kharla?” Sheppard said. “Come over here.”

“I am… I am fine, sore but fine.” She grabbed the knife and got off the bed to stand next to him.

Hands still bound together, he firmly gripped Hobson’s gun aiming it to the back of Tantoff’s head. Despite being completely naked and covered by fresh bruises and bloody gashes, there was no doubt that he was an experienced warrior in command of the situation. Checking around the room, Kharla noticed Hobson’s body face down on the floor next to the side table. His neck bent at an unnatural angle, the left side of his head coated by dark blood and mottled tissue. He was obviously dead. She was glad.  

While Sheppard kept his grip steady on the gun, she cut the rope and tried to gently ease it out of the lacerations encircling his wrists.

“Thank you, Kharla,” he said.

“No, I need to thank you, Colonel Sheppard,” she replied.

“Please call me John and I guess we should save the thanking for later. Now, before we were so rudely interrupted you said that there are clothes and footwear here that we could use?” Sheppard asked in an earnest tone. “I really don’t want to make him strip.”

“I don’t know about boots but  the lady kept some of the bed comp… the captives’ clothes in this chamber. I will get them.” Kharla quickly moved to rummage in the chest of drawers. She stood so that she could keep an eye on the two men. Her hands trembled in fear that something else would happen to impede their escape.

“Good,” Sheppard said. Then he ordered Tantoff to kneel on the floor with his hands clasped behind his head. “Don’t move. If you try anything, you’ll end up a corpse like your two cronies and Vernara. By the way this is a very nice weapon. Genii made, isn’t it?”

Not waiting for an answer, he reversed his grip on the pistol and used it to strike the guard on the back of the head. Tantoff collapsed to the ground. Sheppard took his boots and then hogtied him with the bindings that had been used on himself. As an added touch, he also gagged and blindfolded him.

While Sheppard was busy immobilizing Tantoff, Kharla searched the chest of drawers. She pulled out some items for Sheppard and piled them up on the counter top. Taking a peak to make sure that he wasn’t looking at her, she hastily dressed herself with the other things she had found. Vernara’s clothes, mostly flowing long-skirted dresses, would have been too big on her and very impractical for an escape. So she chose to wear her plainest undergarments and the smallest men’s trousers and shirt from her mistresses’ collection. She had to use a belt to synch the very loose trousers around her waist.

She was rolling up the shirt sleeves when Sheppard approached her. Once again, he had covered himself with the short black pants.

“I hope you found something for me,” he said.

She pointed at the clothes on top of the dresser, “I think that these are your trousers, socks and vest. Your shirts were too badly ripped but I found one that should fit you. But before you put it on, I need to bandage your back. You are bleeding and ...”

“We have no time for that,” he interrupted her.

“I will be very quick and you will be able to move faster with less pain. Everybody is still asleep now, we have a few minutes to spare,” she insisted. “If I don’t take some care of it now, you will soon feel weak and stiff. Can you risk that?”

“Wow, you remind me of someone,” he said sounding amused. “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”

Feeling heat rise to her cheeks, she pointed to an open drawer. “If you want to use them. There are men’s underthings in there. Everything is clean.”

She turned to search her mistress’ wardrobe to find a pair of boots she could wear. Behind her Sheppard muttered, “Great, now I am reduced to pillaging that dammed woman’s sex trophy collection. I guess I should be grateful that she wasn’t satisfied with just notches on her tong.”

By the time she finished jamming her feet in a pair of too large leather boots, Sheppard was half-dressed and ready for her ministrations.

Some of the whip marks were quite deep and ragged. They really needed to be carefully cleaned and stitched closed. Instead, she just dabbed antiseptic ointment on the largest of her bandages and placed it over the most heavily damaged section. On top of it, she wrapped the remaining bandages around his torso to secure it in place. She felt his body quiver but he only let out one hiss of pain.

The forced closeness felt uncomfortably intimate; neither of them looked at the other. She knew that this pathetic effort at staunching the wounds would only slow down the blood loss—but it was the best she could do given the circumstances. She stepped away from him as soon as she was done. There was no time for her to take care of the re-opened wound on his right shoulder and the shallow cuts she had shamefully made on his upper back.

Sheppard put on the shirt—not bothering to fasten the buttons—and sloppily tucked it into his trousers. He put on the vest and jammed the pistol inside it. He struggled a bit to bend and tie the boots. She did not offer to help him, sensing that he would refuse.

“Please tell me that we can use the secret passage behind that screen to escape this hell hole,” he said glancing up at her. Finished with the boots, he winced as he straightened his back.

“Yes, through there is a passage that leads to the guards’ room and from there we can take back corridors to the service entrance. The path to the Ring of the Ancestors is nearby,” she said. “It’s still too early for even the lowliest servants to be up. If we hurry we should be able to get out without being seen.”

Sheppard briefly chewed on his lower lip, “Listen Kharla, you don’t have to come with me through the ring if you don’t want to. Do you have family or anyone on this planet that can keep you safe? I’ll take you to them.”

“No, there is no one. I am not from here,” Kharla’s voice became unsteady. Her two months on this planet had been the worst in her difficult life. She did not want to stay here, but she had nowhere else to go to. “Please take me with you. I’ll do anything… “

His eye brows shot up and he hastily said, “I didn’t mean that. You don’t have to do anything. Of course, I’ll take you with me if you want. We really should…, we’ll talk later. Now we have to go.”

They both carried small bundles as they hurried behind the screen. In hers, she had packed some extra clothing and what she could find of the soft pads the lady used for her monthly flow, the rolls and sweets that remained from her last meal, and what was left of the healing supplies that she had brought to the chamber, seemingly ages but probably not that long ago.


	12. Chapter 12

Their mad race through the woods was terrifying. Kharla had been there only once before. It had been  in the daytime, when she had been brought to Khamala Prime through the ring of the Ancestors. After her arrival at the Alkamade family compound, they allowed her to go outside only when supervised by Cook or another senior servant so that she could tend to the herbal and vegetable gardens. She had no clear idea of what lay outside the walled enclave.

Now, under the dim light of the waning winter moons, the twisted barren trees looked menacing. Every little sound and creak made her heart skip a beat. Was it a wild animal or enraged pursuers? She followed Sheppard’s steps very closely. After she pointed him in the right direction, he had taken over leading their flight to the ring.

She felt blisters forming at her heels from Vernara’s too large boots. She stopped thinking of her as the lady when Sheppard commented, in a very bitter tone, that the bitch (some furry four-legged animal, he hastily explained) certainly was no lady in his book. Since it was very difficult to talk while fleeing, she filed away for the future all her questions about the content of this probably very interesting book. Perhaps, she could read it to learn about his people and their customs.

Sheppard had been more fortunate with regard to footwear. In the guards’ room, they found his boots and even his weapons. She couldn’t tell which of those surprises had pleased him more. She was happy that at least one part of her companion’s battered body would be comfortable. For both altruistic and selfish reasons, she worried that he might collapse anytime from his injuries. At least for now, he still had the strength to move at a pace that she struggled to match.

For her own part, every step she took magnified the pain in her sore ribs and pelvis. Even though she had enjoyed it quite a bit when she was a child, now her running was clumsy—overworked, underfed and treated like a prisoner she hadn’t done it in years. She had already stumbled twice. If she had the energy, she would have been embarrassed that Sheppard, who was probably almost twice her age and more severely hurt, had to stop to pull her up. After the second fall, he slowed down a little to accommodate her shorter stride. Once in a while he made her stop and lean against a tree to rest, while he listened for any sounds that would indicate that they were being followed.

The sun hadn’t risen and with luck no one had yet noticed what happened in Vernara’s chamber, which she had purposely segregated from the rest of the household. In Kharla’s opinion, it felt very right that their escape had a chance to succeed precisely because Vernara treasured her privacy and only trusted her personal guards to be within sound range when she indulged in her barbaric entertainment.

Now, her chest felt ready to explode. They had been running for so long—they must be close to the ring, she hoped. She scanned the path in front of her to take note of anything else that might trip her up. She was so tired that if she fell again, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to get back up. To her great relief, she noticed that they were nearing a flandar-covered boulder to the left of the path. The only other time she had come through here, she had immediately recognized the low, grey-green plant because of its powerful medicinal properties. Lagona, the healer who she had previously served, had taught her well. In retrospect, she hadn’t been such a hard taskmaster. Too bad she died unexpectedly. Her daughter had sold Kharla’s bond to pay off her own gambling debts.

Kharla pulled on Sheppard’s arm to make him stop behind the massive rock, “The ring of the Ancestors is just over there. In daylight we would have no trouble seeing it from here.”

“Good,” he said between deep breaths. It was still so dark that his face was shadowed, a little bit of moonlight reflected off his eyes. “Kharla, I need you to wait here, out of sight of the path. I’ll go ahead and take care of the watchman. When it’s safe, I’ll signal you with a flash of light from my P90, this riffle. Be sure to watch for the light, there will be no sound. You come running and we’ll get out of here.”

The reassuring tone of his last sentence quelled any argument that she had ready to burst at the tip of her tongue. She crouched behind the boulder and watched him silently disappear in the direction of the ring. All she could do was wait and worry.

She had heard the soldiers in the barracks talk about how blessedly boring it was to take the night watch at the ring. With no Wraith or bandit raids in many seasons, nothing ever happened they said—the younger ones childishly sounding as if that was a bad thing.

Most of those men had been nice to her, especially the ones she had treated with her herbs and ointments. She hoped that Sheppard wouldn’t have to kill whoever was posted tonight. She had been tempted to ask him, but she didn’t want to risk angering him because he might decide to leave her here despite what he had said.

Without any other options, she was putting a lot trust in a person who she had only known for a little over a day, under very dire circumstances. But maybe, it was exactly because they had interacted in such a desperate situation that she knew in her gut that she could trust him. In the midst of what had transpired in that horror-filled, candle scented chamber, she had seen it in his eyes and through his brave actions that, for whatever reason, he now felt bound to bring her to safety. Nevertheless, while she did not believe that he had any ulterior motives, she could not be certain. Experience had taught her that help does not come without a price.

To distract herself and to do something useful, she harvested some of the flandar and carefully packed it in her bundle. That only took a short time. Left with nothing else to do, she started obsessing about the potentially dangerous origin of every single sound she heard. She was verging on complete panic when she saw the flash of light. With newly found energy, she sprinted to the ring. When she flew up the steps, she noticed the dark shape of a man lying unmoving on the ground.

“He should be okay, I knocked him out and tied him up with the slip ties from my vest.” Sheppard said, as if he had read her mind. “The gate… I mean the ring is going to make noise when it activates, but there is nothing we can do about that. Hopefully no one will be close enough to hear or see it. Would you keep an eye out while I dial it up?”

“Yes, of course.” she answered turning her eyes away from the body to scan the dark surroundings. She moved to stand next to Sheppard by the ring control pedestal.

Even though she had been tasked to be the lookout, she couldn’t stop herself from stealing glances at what he was doing. This was the first time she had been close enough to really see the round orange-red dome and the two concentric rings of keys decorated with strange symbols. The surface in which they were embedded looked so impossibly smooth—she wanted to, but did not dare touch it. She remembered her duty and again glanced up to check the ominous darkness around them.

When Sheppard pressed on the first symbol, the ring began to make a strange whirling noise. She turned her head and gaped at the clustered dots of light that appeared to move within the inner ring. One by one each of the inverted azure triangles lit up. The activated ring mesmerized her. She took a step toward it.

Sheppard grabbed her arm to hold her back, “Wow, Kharla, stop! Never stand in front of the ring until the wormhole is engaged. The vortex would kill you.”

He must have read the confusion in her face because he added, “I’ll explain later. You can look but just don’t step in front of it until I tell you it’s safe. I’ll be the lookout.”

He brought his weapon to his shoulder and he carefully checked the surrounding area for any signs of danger. The ring was making too much noise to hear any sounds. Kharla turned her attention back to it. All seven triangles were lit, a white light momentarily flickered in its center before transforming itself into a powerful surge of blue foam that would have swept out anything standing in front of it. The sight and sound made her jump backwards, almost knocking into Sheppard. As quickly as it had swooped out, the blue substance became reabsorbed into a still pool that filled the ring.

“Kharla, it’s time to go,” Sheppard said, lightly touching her shoulder. “Just walk straight through the ring. Don’t stop and absolutely don’t change direction. I will be right behind you.”

\------------------------------------------

Kharla should have been exhausted but was buoyed by the relief of having escaped Khamala Prime. This was the third stargate they had gone through. Sheppard had used that term when he tried to explain to her the rudimentary workings of the dialing device and the ring. Even though she didn’t understand a lot of what he said, she had decided that stargate was a more fitting term than ring for an otherwise impossible link between unimaginably far away worlds.

He had told her that he wouldn’t dial them directly to Atlantis because of security reasons. So they stayed in the first two worlds only long enough for him to dial the next address. That was a very good thing, since one had been a barren sprawl of rock and sand, the other a large city turned into rubble.

“Is this your world? It’s beautiful,” she said looking in wonder at the green hillside that spread below them. Its gentle slopes were sprinkled with bursts of purple and yellow wild flowers, a scattering of bushes and a few immense leafy trees. She could hear the sound of rushing water nearby. “Where is your base?”

“It’s nice isn’t it?” This was the first time she had seen him smile. He took in a few deep breaths of fresh air. The smile broke into a wince; his hand moved up to touch his rib cage. “No, this isn’t where my base is located, but we are safe here. I thought we could take a short rest before we go to my home. There is a stream nearby with drinkable water and I … I would like to cool down a little.”

“I could use some water too,” she said. Her mouth was parched and filled with a sour taste. Before she could pointlessly ask if his chest hurt (of course it did, she had seen the old and new bruises), her stomach growled loudly.

With a chuckle, he patted his vest pockets and extracted a couple of shiny metallic packets, which he handed to her. “You must be hungry. These taste pretty good.”

He showed her how to open the wrapping and warned her not to throw it on the ground. As if she would do such a thing and spoil this beautiful place. She wolfed down both food bars while they walked to the stream. Maybe it was because she was famished, but she thought they were delicious, crunchy on the outside and chewy-sweet on the inside.

“Aren’t you going to eat too?” she asked him. “Or did you just give me the only ones you had?”

“Don’t worry I have more. I always pack extras for McKay … for a friend,” he said. “Anyway, I am not hungry right now.”

Something in the tone of his voice made her look at him more carefully. Her healer instincts kicked in when she noticed the grayish pallor of his skin, the sweaty forehead (despite the chilling temperature of the planet they had just left) and the lines of pain on his face. She thought that no matter how strong willed he was, he would soon become too ill to go any further.

“Colonel … I mean John,” it felt strange to call him by his given name, but he had already corrected her several times. It would seem rude and stupid to keep ignoring his requests. “Your injuries must be properly tended as soon as possible. Shouldn’t we just hurry through the gate to your base?”

“You are going to get along really well with Keller and Beckett, our two chief healers,” he replied not making much sense and definitely not answering her question.   




They had reached a stream which bubbled forcefully along a stone bed lined by young trees and dark-broad leafed bushes. A small waterfall fed into it. He leaned his riffle against the stump of a tree that had snapped in two and fallen across the stream banks. They took turns drinking water from their cupped hands. It tasted fresh and clear. If any water could be called delicious, this was definitely it.

In drinking, they had splattered water on their hair and clothes. It didn’t matter, the air was warm enough so that she did not feel chilled. However, she noticed him shiver. Catching his eye, she looked at him, pointedly waiting for an answer to her question. He seemed hesitant, maybe even embarrassed. She wasn’t sure why. When she thought about it for another moment, she understood.


	13. Chapter 13

Kharla was right, John thought, he did need medical help. He felt worse than shit. There had to be a better (and preferably non-scatological) word to encompass the pain, fatigue and mental upheaval that were mercilessly competing for control of his body. Sooner rather than later, one of them was going to win. Right now he was running out of the stamina needed to maintain this—how might McKay phrase it?—stiff-upper-lip, heroic façade he had been using to keep moving and not scare the bejeebers out of his young companion. She had done enough to save his life without having to burden her with taking care of him when (not if) he finally passed out. _So why don’t you just go directly to Atlantis instead of taking a leisure walk through these allergy-laden grassy fields?_ —he could hear McKay’s voice screeching in his head. Maybe he was delirious. But no, seriously, he really did have a plan.

While taking the long way back to Atlantis through three stargates was most likely overkill, he could justify it as an ultra-precautionary tactic. After all, in Pegasus you could never discount the possibility that someone with devious intentions will find a way to track you down through a route that should be untraceable. This someone might be Vernara’s people, Wraith worshipers or other known or unknown enemies who would love to find out Atlantis’ current location. They had all been bitten in the ass often enough to know perfectly well that in this galaxy the unthinkable will happen. He had made it impossible for anyone to trace his path home.

However, most likely Woolsey and definitely Keller and Becket would consider a pit-stop to rest and rejuvenate irresponsible given that both he and Kharla needed medical attention. Let alone that a whole bunch of people were now wasting invaluable time searching for him—time they should be spending looking for McKay. Honestly, if all he had to face were just his boss and the docs before being reunited with Teyla and Torren, he would agree wholeheartedly with the logic for a speedy return to Atlantis. However, his situation wasn’t so simple.

In reality, he had to get himself prepared to face the non-intentional and intentional scrutiny of returning in this—let’s politely call it, disheveled state—after having been kidnapped for reasons he absolutely dreaded having to explain to anyone, let alone in official verbal and written reports, and in conversations with various caring and not-so-caring people. As he thought about it, he realized that facing a Wraith might be easier than attempting to avoid feeding the ever hungry Atlantis rumor mill. The potential repercussions of people learning what had happened to him filled him with anxiety. He tried to imagine how the news might affect his ability to maintain his hard-earned authority as military commander. Would his troops think less of him? Would Stargate Command psycho-evaluate him to death and find him unfit for command? He couldn’t remember anything about regulations for dealing with personnel sexually assaulted by—by what the hell would Vernara and Hobson be considered? They weren’t enemy combatants, were they? His brain reeled with these and other jumbled thoughts. So, to pull his shit together, he was essentially taking a very short mental health and personal hygiene break. He hoped that his body would hold up just a little longer.

For this purpose, he had decided to visit M8J-367—a lovely but failed Ancient terraforming experiment. This planet was absolutely perfect for human habitation during its present Spring season, which lasted about thirty-five days of its four hundred and three day annual cycle. It turned into complete hell the rest of the time because of daily temperature extremes and a total absence of edible fauna and flora. The odds of surviving even a brief visit the rest of the year were very slim. Fortunately, he had memorized a mini-encyclopedia of useful Pegasus’ planet calendars, key survivability data and stargate addresses.

Seeing Kharla enjoy the beauty of the place, confirmed that he had made a good choice for their last rest stop. He took in a deep breath of fresh air and paid the price with a sharp pain in his ribs. Hobson had really caught him by surprise when he wacked him there. Maybe the guy hadn’t been as dumb as he looked; on second thought, he had been since he did manage to get himself killed.

His eyes dropped back to Kharla who appeared to be waiting for something. He realized that he hadn’t answered her question. The look she gave him reminded him of Teyla’s serene but intent, you-are-not-fooling-me expression. It might seem counter-intuitive, but this was one of the first things about Teyla that had caught his heart. He really loved the way she could read him like an open book. Sometimes words made communication too difficult.

“We’ll go very soon,” he finally said. “But first, I really need to wash up a bit. You could go first if you want.” He looked at her hoping that he didn’t really have to spell out why he wanted to do what he wanted to do.

To his relief, it only took a short pregnant pause for understanding to click on her face. No doubt about it, Kharla definitely was a fast thinker. Not that he needed any more proof, after what she had been able to do in a traumatic situation that would have paralyzed most people.

He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the implications of what had transpired between the two of them. The ever present nauseous feeling in his stomach worsened whenever he thought about how she had seen him stripped of everything and forced to repeatedly submit for Vernara’s pleasure. Every second of that nightmare was permanently imprinted in his brain, complete with full sensory overload—sights, smells, sensations and sounds. He knew that Kharla had been hypnotized to participate without inhibitions in his and, eventually, her own sadistic sexual exploitation. He didn’t blame her for anything. While he hoped that she didn’t remember it, the few words they had exchanged and the way she acted suggested that she did. Some of the glances she threw at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, telegraphed that she remained a bit suspicious of his intentions. Given what she had just gone through that seemed perfectly natural to him. In fact, he considered it an indicator of good survival instincts. He hoped that once they got to safety and she had time to process things more calmly, she wouldn’t start despising or resenting him for being the instrument of her de facto violation. He already hated himself for that.

For now at least, she exhibited just more kindness as she gently but forcefully insisted that he get washed up first. She also gave him a generous handful of a soft moss-like plant she had collected. She called it flandar (which in his mind conjured images of elves and _The Lord of the Rings_ ). She explained that this flandar stuff had amazing cleansing and soothing properties when moistened and lightly used as a sponge. She also reminded him that he should avoid getting his bandages wet, if possible.

“Thanks. You could teach a lot of stuff to our docs about natural medicines,” he said. He tugged at her sleeve to stop her from turning way. It had suddenly dawned on him the meaning behind the strange expression he glimpsed in her face. “Kharla, you do know that it wasn’t your fault, right? Vernara did something to you to make you obey her every command. You didn’t do those .. those things to me. She did.”

She shook her head, “How could strange smelling smoke and her words have compelled me to be so cruel? My own hands held the knife that cut you.”

“I don’t know for sure but I think she used a form of hypnosis. The doctors in Atlantis will figure it out. My point is, it wasn’t you. I don’t blame you and neither should you.” As he said these things, John could not help but think that McKay would have called him a hypocrite for lecturing someone about not feeling guilty for things she had no control over.

“I should have resisted. I was weak,” her tired bloodshot eyes swelled with tears.

“No, it wasn’t your fault,” he repeated, but she had already rushed off.

Damn it. He had not meant to make her feel worse. And right now, he didn’t have the words, the energy or time to reason with her. Once in Atlantis, he needed to make sure that she talked to someone about this. She should not have to carry this guilt around.

All he could do at this moment was concentrate on the logistics of quickly making himself somewhat decent. Even if Kharla had not said anything, he certainly had no intention of getting his back wet. That would hurt like hell. But how he could possibly keep the bandages on his wrists dry he could not figure out. In the little down time they had while waiting for the stargate wormholes to shut down, Kharla had wrapped both his wrists with the bandages he had found untouched in his tac vest. He had spent that time dry swallowing some Ibuprofen and giving her a sketchy explanation of what to expect at his base. He could sense that she was as uncomfortable being around him as he was around her. Vernara had screwed with their minds, not just their bodies.

John put down the flandar on a rock. Leaning sideways against a stump, he took off his boots—not an easy maneuver since he really couldn’t sit properly. If that was hard enough, shucking off his tac vest and the rest of his clothes was even more difficult to do one-handed. He had to avoid moving his right shoulder because it triggered daggers of bone-deep pain. His body adamantly protested as he continued to undress. The burning stings on his back flared up again after having been dulled down to a bearable level by Kharla’s hasty bandage-job and the adrenalin-rush of their escape. His chest throbbed from bone bruises and possibly a cracked rib or two. The ache from the bump on the back of his head had blossomed to a major headache, but at least he was pretty sure that he didn’t have a concussion. There were more things wrong with his body, but he really didn’t want to think about them. He set his jaw and willed himself to compartmentalize the pain.

Instead of moaning, he swore under his breath as he stripped all the way. He noted the blood stains on the shirt and his borrowed underwear. He did not like the implications of that. At least, he was happy that he had grabbed some replacements from Vernara’s sick treasure trove.

He didn’t waste any time looking at his damaged body. He just splashed water on himself and started scrubbing his face. When squeezed, the flandar released a small amount of jelly-like liquid that didn’t lather but seemed to do a pretty good job getting rid of the dirty, sticky patina that coated his skin. He also liked its sharp crisp smell—someone could probably bottle this stuff and make good money selling it on Earth.

His touch became much less gentle when he moved down to wash his mid-section. It stung viciously but he absolutely had to get rid of the reek from Vernara and Hobson that still permeated his nostrils. He could just hear McKay sputtering something about not destroying the evidence of the crime. But no matter how deeply he scoured, there would still be plenty of evidence left, physical and otherwise. Anyway, there was really nobody left to bring to justice and, for that matter, not much of a trans-planetary court system around here.

A rush of unwanted memories swept over him. He could still feel Vernara’s hands and body all over him. God, he so did not want to revisit how she had infiltrated his most intimate places. He managed to sweep the memory aside only to replace it with the sensation of Hobson’s hands grasping his ass and forcing his way inside him. The surprising raw pain and pressure had felt even worse than when Vernara had buggered him. It had been bad enough to regain consciousness in the middle of it, but it had been even worse to force himself to lay still until he was sure that Kharla had a chance to get away from Tantoff. Those seconds had felt like hours.

He fought the sudden urge to immerse his whole body under the waterfall and scrub himself clean of every molecule of their filth. This was not the time or place for that, he reminded himself. He needed to get back to Atlantis, so that Kharla would be safe and he would be home. Maybe once there, he could find a quiet corner to have a break-down. He had no doubt that Teyla would help him with that. Her heart and understanding seemed limitless.

The water felt colder now that he was just rinsing himself. He shivered. _Enough of that, time to buck up and face the music_ , he admonished himself. He got dressed and called Kharla back to take her turn at their outdoor shower. She was much quicker that he had been.

As they walked back to the stargate, he finally told her that his base was actually Atlantis, the fabled city of the Ancestors. He had withheld the information until now for fear that their escape might be thwarted and they would end-up captured. The news brought a huge smile in her face; she seemed to have momentarily forgotten her sorrow .

Once they got to the ring, she followed his lead and placed her own bundle of discarded clothes on the platform. He dialed up the address to Atlantis. They watched both bundles disintegrate when the wormhole vortex swooshed out. Such a small thing felt inordinately satisfying.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains spoilers for the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by Joe Graham, Amy Griswold and Melissa Scott.

The meeting had gone on for a while. Jennifer wished she had pen and paper in her hands instead of a computer tablet—a wonderful tool that had completely taken away the joy of doodling during a meeting. She really needed something to do while Beckett reported their latest findings on how they could turn Wraith-Rodney back to human.

They had tirelessly tinkered with computer simulations using all the available data gleamed from the extensive experience with genetic transmutations the two of them (or more accurately the three of them, when counting original Beckett and the present Beckett clone) had accumulated during the past five years. The computers had churned away at the huge amounts of data on the Michael & Company Wraith-to-human fiasco, the disastrous infection of the Wraith girl Ellia with the experimental anti-Wraith retrovirus that original Beckett had been designing to strip away key iratus bug-derived genes (hopefully the ones controlling the human-exclusive diet) from Wraith DNA, and the successful John human-to-bug-back-to-human conversion. Zelenka and other scientists had also been scouring the Atlantis databases for any other applicable information.

Their simulations were chock-full of parameters and accounted for numerous variables, generating models ranging from worst case to best case scenarios. Impressive, but they were still just theoretical models, which were only as good as the data and parameters used to generate them. What they knew about Rodney’s transformation was highly conjectural, based on scanty visual observations, nothing tangible. Bottom line, they had done all the prep work they could. Now they needed Rodney, or at least a tissue sample from him, to run the laboratory tests and trial experiments necessary to come up with a viable method to bring him back to humanity.

These thoughts made Jennifer inwardly cringe. She must be a horrible girlfriend, lover and almost fiancé for using the words Rodney and ‘tissue sample’ in the same sentence. Obviously, if they got close enough to get a tissue sample, the rescue team would just snatch Rodney (kicking and screaming) away from his captors. Jennifer wanted this to happened so badly—she had actually started praying at night to whatever deity kept watch (albeit poorly) on Pegasus to bring Rodney back—but that thought also terrified her. What if she fell apart at the sight of Wraith-Rodney? What if they couldn’t make him human again? What if they did and Rodney was changed because of his experience? What if he had fed?

Without the freedom to doodle, part of her mind could not stop worrying about Rodney. She hadn’t seen him in over a month. The day the Wraith snagged him in New Athos, they hadn’t even had breakfast together because she had been too exhausted after a very long emergency surgery the night before. The worst thing was that she absolutely could not remember if she had at least sleepily mumbled, “love you too” when Rodney had kissed her on the top of her head before leaving the room to join his team for breakfast. She had wrongly taken for granted that she would see him again at dinner.

And now, by all accounts, Rodney was a bona fide Wraith. Enough of one that a little over a week before, he did not recognize his best friend John and had proceeded to blast him with a stunner not once, but six times. Zapped by that huge amount of ionized charge, John had been lucky not to have gone into cardiac arrest. The only consolation was that Rodney was not a very good Wraith. No self-respecting member of that life-sucking species would risk potentially killing a good meal that way. Maybe, he hadn’t changed enough to feed yet—she fervently hoped.

Jennifer had read and re-read Teyla and Ronon’s mission report of the incident so many times that she had it memorized. Especially the part where they described Rodney’s alarmingly changed appearance: the bone-white hair, the marked ridges on his face and the dark claws in his hands. The report hadn’t said anything about his eyes—those eyes so adept at expressing arrogance (very often), cluelessness (pretty frequently too) and love compounded by lust (mostly in private). She wondered if they were still that deep blue she loved to lose herself in. She really missed him.

Until John’s recent mysterious abduction, the search for Rodney had been the top priority mission for the Atlantis military contingent. The search-and-rescue efforts were now divided. She understood and supported the reasons why, but it still drove her crazy with anxiety. The night of John’s disappearance, she had cried herself to sleep for the first time since the first week after Rodney became MIA. It wasn’t solely because she considered John and Teyla very good friends, but it was also because she knew that John was the best hope for finding Rodney. No one could beat the we-don’t-leave-people-behind drum like he could. For a few irrational minutes, she had even been angry at John as if this added obstacle to Rodney’s recovery were his fault. After she cleared her head with cold water, she felt awful for thinking that, for all she knew John could now lay somewhere badly injured or worse.

Her guilt about harboring such selfish thoughts had resurfaced the next day, when she noticed the flicker of fear in Teyla’s usually composed exterior on hearing that the blood on the arrow was indeed John’s. Jennifer had almost burst out and apologized for thinking badly of John for being so inopportunely kidnapped. Instead, she tried to reassure Teyla that the arrow had probably not caused a serious injury and that the traces of a powerful narcotic indicated that the intent of the attack had been to very quickly subdue John, not kill him. The two of them were joined by their pathetic hunger for tiny bits of hope about their lost lovers. She consoling herself with evidence that Rodney wasn’t a very good Wraith and Teyla with the knowledge that John’s captors hadn’t intended to kill him on the spot. Right now she hated Pegasus.

“Unscheduled gate activation,” Banks’s voice crackled from everyone’s head sets and the room speakers.

All eyes in the conference room turned to the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the gate room, one level below them. Beckett and Woolsey immediately stood up and stepped out on the balcony.

Jennifer didn’t move yet. She wasn’t eager to jump into another crisis. In her experience, ninety-eight percent of the time these unscheduled activations were harbingers of something really bad like death, life-threatening injuries and foreign invasions. She had long stopped raising her hopes that one of these days Rodney would come back on his own—given who had taken him, that was totally unrealistic.   




“It’s coming from M8J-367 and it’s Colonel Sheppard’s IDC,” a twinge of excitement evident in the technician’s voice. “He can’t communicate with us without his com, but he is on a planet on our latest ‘safe haven’ list. What do you want me to do, Mr. Woolsey?”

“Lower the shield,” Woolsey said.

Amazingly, no one tripped as they rushed en mass down the stairs. Always vigilant, the Marines on gate duty shifted to a guarded stance with P90s pointed at the cobalt blue of the event horizon.

While John and an unknown young woman walked through the gate, Jennifer scanned their figures to identify any possible medical problems. With relief, she noted that they were both conscious and no one had missing limbs or otherwise visibly gushing wounds. She concentrated on John, not just because he was one of her responsibilities, but also because he looked worse off.

He had fading bruises on his cheekbones and a couple of minor cuts around the mouth. Someone had definitely slapped him around a bit, probably with the back of the hand. The mandarin-style collar of his dark burgundy shirt (definitely not Atlantis-issue) wasn’t buttoned all the way, so she glimpsed contusions around his neck, as if someone had tried to choke him. The sleeve cuffs were unbuttoned too, stained bandages clearly visible around both wrists. The pain lines on his forehead were unmistakable. Somewhere under his clothing there had to be the wound from the arrow—most likely his right arm or shoulder, she suspected from the stiff way he held that side. Jennifer found it interesting that his hair looked damp, while his clothes were dry. He had a bit of a five o’clock shadow but no more than a day’s worth—she had seen him often enough after multi-day missions to know the difference.

Both of them were clearly exhausted. But the girl appeared to get a second wind as she took in the impressive sight of the Atlantis stargate room. John, on the other hand, looked a tad uneasy at the number of people staring at him with smiles and grins plastered on their faces. Probably because of his innate dislike of being the center of attention and the marked absence of Teyla and Ronon—the only people left in his team. John’s slight smile seemed forced.

“Welcome back Colonel,” said Woolsey, she could hear the relief in his voice at having his military commander back. “It’s really good to see you. Since you disappeared four days ago, Teyla, Ronon, Major Lorne and several squads have been scouring the galaxy to find you. They will be reporting in soon and we’ll tell them the good news.”

“Glad to be back sir. Four days —wow,” John cleared his throat but failed to get rid of the hoarseness in his voice. “Sorry it took so long to get back from Khamala Prime.”

“Khamala Prime? I have never heard of it,” Woolsey said.

“And I really wish I hadn’t,” John cast an apologetic look at his companion, who stood a step behind him. “This is Kharla. Kharla, this is Mr. Woolsey, the leader of our base, and these are Doctors Beckett and Keller, the healers I talked to you about. You’ll meet the other people later. Mr. Woolsey, Kharla helped me get free and we escaped together. We went through three different stargates to make sure no one followed us. It’s … it’s a long and complicated story. I hope it can wait until after we get checked in the infirmary, sir?”

Jennifer noticed that she wasn’t the only one momentarily dumbfounded at that last and very unexpected sentence coming out of John’s mouth. If he hadn’t looked so beat up, she would have suspected that he was a clone, doppelganger or some other type of impostor. He must be in really bad shape to actually make that request, she thought with a growing sense of worry. Catching Beckett’s frown, she realized that he too was concerned by John’s uncharacteristic eagerness to get medical attention.

Woolsey recovered first, “Yes, of course. Please go take care of yourselves. I will make sure to bring in the search teams.” Looking at the girl, he graciously added. “Kharla, we are in your debt for allying yourself with Colonel Sheppard.”

“No, it is I that am in his debt,” Kharla said in a very soft voice. She seemed overwhelmed by the attention paid to her.

Jennifer decided it was time to take charge of the situation as the Chief Medical Officer, “Okay, you can all discuss this later. Now, it’s time for the infirmary for both Colonel Sheppard and Kharla. I think that they could both use some TLC.”

“Don’t worry, Kharla, TLC is a good thing,” said John, the first to respond to the girl’s confused expression. Jennifer reminded herself once again not to use Earth sayings when trying to lighten up the mood of Pegasus’ natives.

John unclipped his P90 one-handed and gave it to the Marine who had just approached him with a snappy salute. “Glad to have you back sir.”

“Thanks, Martinez,” John gave him one of those meaningful silent glances that often passed for communication between the military personnel.

Both she and Carson converged on John. He took a small step back. “Hey, no double teaming. Would you at least hold off until we get to your home turf?” he said. A typical John Sheppard remark but delivered without the usual panache.

Jennifer had a close-up view of the dark shadows under blood-shot eyes. She controlled her professional impulse to snatch his wrist and start checking his vitals.

“Okay Colonel,” she agreed. She almost bit her tongue to hold off the barrage of medical questions that were ready to burst out of her mouth. John deserved a break. He had made it back to Atlantis on his own two feet and he seemed determined to make it to the infirmary without help. 

“I really appreciate it, doc.” He walked next to her down the corridor. Behind them, Carson explained to Kharla the rudiments of transporter function, basically a one-sided conversation.

“How’s Torren?” John said a couple of seconds later.

“He’s fine. Teyla told him that you were away on a mission and would be back in a few days. She didn’t want him to worry.”

“Good,” he said.

He seemed momentarily lost to his own thoughts. She decided not to add that when she took Torren to lunch today, he had gone up to a bunch of Marines in the mess hall and asked: “Where my da?” The quickest witted one had flashed her most reassuring smile and promptly answered that his dad was helping some people on another planet and would be back as soon as he could. It had been a cute and heart wrenching scene.

As they approached the transporter, John stopped. “Uhm …, I wanted to ask you one more favor. Kharla has been through a lot and I was wondering if you could check her while Carson does me? I think she would be more comfortable with the attention of a woman —a nice woman, instead of a man.”

It sounded like a perfectly reasonable and sensitive request, she thought. She couldn’t refuse but she had an inkling—what did Rodney call it? A spidey sense—that there might also be another motive behind it. “That’s fine John,” she said.

“Thanks Jennifer,” His visible relief seemed a little out proportion for the small favor she had just granted him. “You are going to like Kharla. You two have some stuff in common.”

Once they reached the infirmary, she guided Kharla to one of the corner exam bays, to give them some privacy. She noticed John stop near the entrance and speak quietly with Beckett. Then, the two of them walked off past them to the back corridor that led to the surgical suites—not standard protocol, by any means. She would find out soon enough what that was about, now she needed to concentrate on her patient.

Jennifer didn’t have much of a chance to learn what, if anything, she had in common with Kharla. The young woman had promptly and politely told her that she didn’t need help to change into the clean scrubs she offered her. During the exam, she became practically mute. She barely went beyond yes and no answers to all her questions about what hurt and what didn’t. Jennifer thought it was a mixture of shyness and extreme fatigue.

Thank goodness for the Atlantis medical scanners—they revealed a lot about her silent patient. While she had no bone breaks or fractures, she had some bone bruises to her ribs and back. As if someone much heavier than her had held her down. She was undernourished and slightly dehydrated. She didn’t have a fever or other signs of disease. In addition to the cuts and abrasions around her neck, Jennifer noticed some healed circular burns and constellations of new and older bruises on her arms. Marks of a difficult life, to say the least.

The scan also estimated her age to be approximately twenty Earth years. Jennifer had learned quickly enough to stop asking Pegasus natives how old they were since the length of years varied from planet to planet. Many of these people had also moved so much to escape the Wraith that they could not possibly keep track of (or care) about their birthdays. They were just satisfied to still be alive.

“Kharla, I am going to give you something for the pain, so that I can clean up the cuts around your throat. The medication might make you sleepy, but I hope you’ll eat and drink something before you take some well-deserved rest,” she said. “We’ll talk more later.”


	15. Chapter 15

The more John thought about it, the more he realized that Teyla’s absence from the Atlantis greeting committee might have been a good thing. With her present, he wouldn’t have gotten away with the tough-guy act in the gate room. She would have read right through him and sensed that something was seriously wrong. Keller and Beckett would have been all over him right there—he would not have escaped a trip on the gurney. Still, it might have been worth the price of seeing her sooner. He really wanted … he absolutely needed to talk to her.

One other thing had gone right: Keller readily agreed to his not so subtle request for gender-matched, patient-doctor pairings. Of course, his reasons were not just for Kharla’s benefit. His upcoming conversation with Beckett would be hard enough—he would have positively dreaded having it with Keller.

This had nothing to do with her professional capabilities. Without a doubt she had proven herself to be a great doctor and an extremely capable CMO. And she was handling this whole Rodney-Wraith debacle with amazing professionalism and levelheadedness. But she already had so much on her emotional plate, she shouldn’t have to deal first hand with what had happened to him. While right now it certainly didn’t feel like it, in the great scheme of things him being kidnapped and sexually abused for a few days had to be trivial compared to being captured, changed into a Wraith and held for over a month. He didn’t want to put Keller in a position to be flustered into making some sort of awkward sympathetic response. Oh crap, who was he trying to kid? He could list all sorts of good reasons for dodging Keller. Bottom line, since he had a choice, he wanted to speak and be examined by someone who was older and not a woman. Yep, he was old fashioned about these things.

He saw Keller lead Kharla down the aisle to one of the corner exam bays. She was in good hands. Beckett headed toward another one of the beds.

“Wait a sec doc,” John beckoned him to stop. Once he had the man’s attention, he continued more softly, “Could we do this somewhere a little more private?”

Beckett scrutinized his face, concern emanating from every pore. “What’s going on Colonel? You look about ready to fall down.”

“Please Carson,” he heard the whine in his own voice. His collapse was inevitable, but he did not want to do it here, within earshot of too many. “I really need to talk to you before you start poking and prodding me.”

After just a moment’s hesitation, Becket said, “Fine.”

He led him past all the exam bays to the back of the infirmary. John willed himself to follow without staggering. The effects of the ibuprofen had worn off and every step jarred his shredded back.

They entered a small operating room—not the big one with the theater seating in the balcony. Beckett closed the door behind them. John stood next to the surgical bed, nervously fingering the clean bedding. The hospital disinfectant smell wasn’t really that bad, it was really a matter of perspective, he thought. He chewed on his lower lip, trying to decide where to start. Beckett waited patiently, at least at first. He laid out some instruments on a tray and turned on a scanner.

All the words John could think of didn’t seem the right way to go—too much melodrama, too pathetic, too personal. His headache was making a strong comeback. He raised his left hand to rub his temple. The unbuttoned sleeve of the shirt fell back revealing stained bandages.

Beckett broke the silence. “Bloody hell. What happened to your wrists?”

“Ropes and friction,” John sighed and continued, “Carson, this is going to sound ridiculous but it’s true. I … I got kidnapped to provide … to provide sexual entertainment for a powerful sadistic woman. Rodney’s Kirk jokes aside, she had no interest in seducing me.” He kept his eyes fixed on the bed—he wished he could just face-plant there and sleep. But before he would allow himself to do that, he had to say the words.

He took a deep breath and continued, “She did … she did what she wanted with me. It sounds so lame, but I couldn’t stop her. And she made me do things that I definitely didn’t want to do. She used these, uhm, bondage things and …. Crap, I am just going to say it. She … she raped me in different ways. I am no prude but I had never thought that a woman could and would do that. Shit, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am a grown man not a kid. I should be able to handle it… I should.”

He glanced up at Beckett and noticed that he had blanched. It almost made him smile to see that he had managed to render the usually eloquent doctor momentarily speechless. He muttered something that John couldn’t completely make out, it sounded like a remix of his most colorful Scottish expressions.

“I’m so sorry John,” he finally said. “I can’t even imagine what you have gone through.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t want you to,” That’s all he could come up. He wanted to make a joke about his dick and balls being shriveled up and hiding high up, never wanting to come out again, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was so close to the truth that it wasn’t funny. He felt defeated by his inability to think of anything to say to lighten up the tension. Why could he think of sarcastic quips when a Wraith queen tried to bend his will but not now?

 “Aye, John, it might take a while but you will handle it. I think you may have already started just by getting out of the mess you were in.” Beckett moved a little closer to him. “Let me have a look at you now. I know that you are hurting.”

John was not at all convinced that he had begun to handle anything. All he had managed to do was say the word—once. And now he was feeling sick to his stomach. He took a big breath to fight down the nausea. That helped only because the pang of pain in his ribs made him reconsider the idea of vomiting.

He started to unclasp the snaps on the tac vest. He had gotten pretty good at doing it one handed. Getting it off was harder. His hand shook when he started to tug the vest off his right shoulder. Lances of pain shot across his upper back. Swept by a sudden wave of dizziness, he propped his hip against the table to steady himself.

“Let me help you get that off. Okay?” said Beckett.

Beckett moved another step closer, arms reaching to him without touching—cautiously asking for permission to infringe his personal space. Normally the doc would have been all over him already, taking scans, flashing bright lights into his eyes. John knew that he was being treated as if he was fragile, and not just physically. It sucked that he needed this handle-with-care approach. He felt strangely nervous being in such close proximity to someone else, even someone he knew and trusted with his life. He hadn’t liked it, but it made sense that earlier he had to consciously control his body not to act fidgety around Kharla, but this was Carson for heaven’s sake.  

John nodded permission for Carson to take over removing the vest. “Thanks. I got shot in the arm by a crossbow arrow. Kharla stitched it up early on. Since then some of the stiches got torn loose. Also, I … I pissed Vernara off a couple of times …  she flogged me with a leather whip. Something right out of _Spartacus_. Kharla tried to clean it up but there wasn’t much time. My whole back feels like it’s on fire.”

He had to stop talking to hitch his breath, while Beckett eased off the vest as gently as possible.

“Who’s Vernara, John?” Beckett dropped the vest to the floor and kicked it under the bed.

“Vernara Alkamade is, I mean was the crazy bitch who had me kidnapped.” John tugged the shirt out of the waistband of his pants. When he reached for the back, the pain level spiked again. He smothered a groan but couldn’t hide a second dizzy spell. He grabbed the edge of the bed to steady himself.  

Becket lightly touched him on his good shoulder, “How about you sit on the bed and let me do the work?”

“I don’t think that I can sit,” he met Beckett’s steady gaze and willed himself not to look away. But he could not say the word again—he wasn’t dealing with it at all. “Something else happened. We got caught by a couple of guards when we were trying to escape. One of them knocked me out. When I came to, he had his … he was, he was buggering me. Even after what Vernara did, it still hurt like hell. I killed him. Carson, you have to check me for STDs. These people did this as a hobby. What if? … Oh shit, I am starting to sound like Rodney.”

John appreciated how Beckett kept himself from visibly reacting to his pathetic story—his facial expression set in a compassionate, but not pitying doctor-mode. He could practically hear the doc’s brain processing the information and trying to come up with an appropriate thing to say.

“It’s okay, John. After what happened to you, it’s perfectly natural that you are worried about these things. I’ll do some tests and give you the right antibiotics and antivirals to take care of it.” He pulled out his ophthalmoscope. “Now, will you let me check your eyes? Where did you get hit in the head?”

Besides being annoyingly bright, the light in his eyes didn’t bother him. But when Beckett palpated the back of his skull, John fought the impulse to jerk away from his touch. “Ouch, stop Carson. Yes, it’s a major bump that’s giving me a hell of headache, but I don’t have a concussion. I wouldn’t have been able to escape if I did.”

“You might be right. However, I am going to run a scan to be certain.” The furrows on Beckett’s forehead deepened as his examination moved down to John’s chest, exposed by the open flaps of the shirt. “Those are some deep bruises on your ribs. Are you having trouble breathing?”

“It doesn’t hurt as much as other stuff as long as I don’t take deep breaths. What’s worse is that the skin on my back and right shoulder feels scorching hot and tight as a drum.” John shivered, the air in the room unexpectedly chilly against his naked skin.

The surge in adrenalin and sheer will power that had kept him running for the past who knows how many hours had totally dissipated. All his internal shields against the pain and discomfort were gone. He swayed and would have crumpled to his feet if Becket hadn’t grabbed him by the left elbow and shoulder. The sudden motion sent shock waves of pain through his whole body. It felt as if tendrils of  molten glass had become embedded under the skin on his back and upper right arm. He couldn’t escape the searing heat, it burnt and stung from the inside out. He ended up gingerly propped up by Beckett, panting and whimpering as he leaned into his shoulder.

“It’s okay son, I got you. I am going to help you lie down on the bed. I’ll just do a quick scan and then I’ll give you medication for the pain.”

Despite the height difference, Beckett maneuvered him fairly easily—but every movement compounded the agony. John helped as best as he could with one arm. All-encompassing stiffness and muscle weakness were making it hard to willfully move any part of his body.

He must have zoned out at some point, because he didn’t know how he finally ended up on the bed, lying three-quarters prone on his left side, a small pillow or folded-up blanket cushioning his head. He heard Beckett talking to someone on the com.

He couldn’t stop himself from shivering, which made him tighten his back muscles. That made the pain worse. His chest felt constricted. Now he was having trouble filling his lungs with each breath.  

“It’s freezing in here,” he said.

“John, I am going to give you oxygen and some pain meds. You have a fever, and your back and arm are a wee bit of a mess. Parts of the bandages are stuck to the gashes on your back. I am going to put you under so that we can clean it up. You will be fine,” said Beckett in a confident tone.

John dimly remembered that the “wee bit” phrase usually meant that something was more serious than Beckett wanted to let on. He had gotten way past the luxury of being worried; he just wanted to be put out of his misery with some really good drugs.

Before that though, there were some other things that he had to say or do, “Wait, I have to talk to Teyla. And what’s going on with Rodney?”

“Teyla will be back soon. You will have plenty of time to talk to her later.” Beckett slipped an oxygen mask over his mouth. “Don’t worry about Rodney right now. We have to fix you up first.”

The flow of oxygen relieved some of the constriction in his chest. His mind briefly cleared up, he remembered something else that he needed to take care of. He moved the mask off his face, “Kharla. Kharla needs to talk to someone. She’s been through a lot.”

Beckett made an exasperated sound. He gently returned the mask to its proper placement, “It’s okay, son. I’ll discuss it with Keller and we’ll take care of it. Hush now and breathe, your O2 levels are a tad low.” 

John felt the prick of a needle on the top of his left hand. The pain started to become more distant. The delicious cool sensation began to loosen up the tension in his back muscles. His thought processes got fuzzier and fuzzier. He barely retained enough awareness of the surroundings to notice that a couple of other people had entered the room. Beckett had called for reinforcements—definitely not a good sign.

“Okay Carson, what’s the status on Colonel Sheppard’s condition?” Keller said. “Oh ….”

That’s the last thing John heard for a while.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I have edited some of the earlier chapters, adding some materials and changing a few details. I made no major changes, so you don't need to re-read everything unless you want to.

Teyla was starting to lose hope. She and Ronon had fruitlessly spent the past eight hours travelling to three different planets to talk to various contacts. Once again they had failed to gather any more information that would help them identify who had taken John and where he was being held.

The only physical clues left from his disappearance were the shattered pieces of his com unit, his perfectly intact aviator glasses and a bloody crossbow arrow. They found the items scattered on the grounds of the open market near where John had last been seen. Doctor Keller’s lab analysis confirmed that the blood on the arrow was John’s and that the arrowhead had been imbued with a powerful narcotic that would have knocked him out within seconds.

Teyla’s thoughts kept on flashing back to his last communication with Ronon, and the pained groan John uttered before the audio got cut-off. Right before that her attention had been divided between monitoring her teammates’ radio communications and keeping up with the conversation between Mr. Woolsey and the Coalition members they were escorting. Ronon had immediately signaled that he would go check on John while she stayed with the group. And then the peaceful market erupted into chaos.

Flaming arrows ignited some of the stands. Merchants and customers ran in all directions, some fleeing, others trying to stop the fires. A cart pulled by a panicked draft animal plowed into their group, sending everybody scrambling for safety. By the time they had managed to extricate themselves from the havoc, John had disappeared. They ran back to the stargate as quickly as possible, but it had been too late to intercept his captors. Reconnaissance by puddle jumper confirmed that there was no signal from John’s subcutaneous transmitter anywhere on the planet. Zalenka pulled off the last fifty stargate addresses dialed by the gate—everybody knew, but no one wanted to be the one to say it, that the odds of finding John that way were virtually astronomic.

Yesterday, Major Lorne’s team came back with the only potentially useful new clue they had: a rumor of a large reward being offered to mercenaries in various planets for John’s capture and delivery in good condition. While the specification of ‘good condition’ appeared to be auspicious for John’s welfare—it made Teyla very uneasy. It sounded like someone wanted John like a piece of merchandise to be used for some illicit purpose.

All the years that she and John had been good friends and trusted comrades in arms, she had always worried when he was missing or injured. Now that they had finally admitted their love for each other, her concern for him had reached monstrous levels. She had not expected that. Or maybe she had, and that was one of the reasons it had taken her so long to admit that she cared for him deeply, in a very non-platonic way. True to character, he hadn’t been very communicative either—they shared ample culpability in that department.

Deep down though, she felt that she was more to blame because between the two of them she, the skilled trader, was the one who was supposed to be an expert communicator. From the first time she had met him, she had seen how John spoke in actions not words—whether it was drinking tea to meet new friends or putting his life in danger to save others. Why then had she been waiting for words? All the things he had done for her and for the ones she cared about had already spoken so loudly.

Her mind wandered back to her last conversation with her friend Harriet Hewston, the young scientist who had died in the first explosion during that horrifying Sunday when the original Carson Beckett had also been killed. Three years had passed, but she still clearly remembered Harriet encouraging her to talk to John instead of waiting for him to make the first move. That was not her people’s way, she had insisted. She had been so sure that John would say something soon if he had any feelings for her. In hindsight, Harriet had been correct in warning her that John was most likely totally oblivious to all the little hints she had dropped about her growing feelings for him. At least the reward for that youthful foolishness was Torren—he had been worth everything. And now finally, she and John had something too. Or at least they had before someone abducted him.

“We’ll find Sheppard,” Ronon said. He stood next to her as she dialed the Atlantis stargate address. “Knowing him, he’ll get back on his own.”

“Certainly, John will do everything possible to escape.” she forced herself to smile at that hopeful thought. She did not want to think that he might have already tried and failed. Maybe he lay somewhere badly hurt or worse.

“After you talk to Woolsey, we’ll meet up with Lorne’s team and figure out what to do next. We will find him,” Ronon repeated as he lightly touched her shoulder, a clumsy but comforting gesture.

Teyla started her report, “This is Teyla and Ronon checking in. We…”

Woolsey cut her off, “Teyla, Colonel Sheppard is back. He dialed in and walked through the gate with a young woman a couple of hours ago. Come back to Atlantis now. The shield is down.”

Ronon’s wide grin mirrored hers. “I was right,” he said as he followed her through the wormhole.

Once she reached the other side, she dropped her pack on the floor of the Atlantis gate room and unhooked her P90.

Woolsey had come down from the control room. “They are still in the infirmary,” he said.

“How is John?” Teyla was surprised that she had to prompt him with the question. He knew full well her emotional attachment to John. The two of them had spoken with Woolsey a few weeks before about their relationship. He had been understanding and supportive, suggesting the best ways to deal with potential chain-of-command issues.

“He looked bruised and exhausted, but perfectly mobile. Keller and Beckett escorted both of them to the infirmary, allowing them to walk there instead of carting them off in gurneys. I haven’t heard back yet.”

Teyla suspected that there was more to the story, but she didn’t want to waste time pressing him for more information.

Ronon took the weapon from her hands. “Go. I’ll take care of things here and check on Torren on my way to the infirmary.”

“Thank you,” she said before heading out to the nearest transporter.

She entered the receiving room of the infirmary. All the exam bays were empty except for one that had the privacy curtain pulled around it. As she moved toward it, Dr. Marina Martini, a new physician, stepped out. Before the doctor closed the curtain, Teyla glimpsed a young woman asleep on the bed. Martini beckoned her to the seating area.

Once they were far enough away so that their soft voices would not disturb the resting patient, she said, “Hi Teyla. Colonel Sheppard is still in surgery with Doctors Beckett and Keller.”

“Hello Dr. Martini. How long has he been in there? Do you know anything about the extent of his injuries?”

“Please call me Marina, remember? I started my shift about an hour ago so I didn’t see him come in. What I heard is that he has some nasty wounds on his back that need cleaning and suturing. Let me check on the system to see if there is any more information logged in.” She touched the screen on her tablet. “It says that he’s been in there about an hour and a half. Keller joined Beckett after she finished taking care of Kharla—that’s the girl sleeping over there—Keller called her the Colonel’s latest stray. From what I heard, she and the Colonel escaped together from wherever they were being held.”

Teyla had previously heard the joke, started by Rodney, about John’s knack for finding people in need of help and bringing them back to Atlantis. John had explained to her that strays were often small furry animals that Earth people, especially children, liked to keep as pets. He had shown her pictures of kittens and puppies—they seemed like very endearing creatures but in her own experience even adorable-looking things could be dangerous. Regardless, it amused her to think of herself as one of the first strays John befriended and rescued in Pegasus.

Feeling unkind for thinking it, Teyla wished that the girl wasn’t asleep so that she could talk to her. “How severe are her injuries?”

“Kharla has a few long but shallow cuts around her neck, heavy bruising all over her torso and back, and some open blisters on her feet. She is exhausted, dehydrated and in pain, but nothing serious. She should be fine in a few days.”

“Good,” said Teyla hoping that meant that John also wasn’t badly hurt. But if so, why was he still in surgery?

“Try not to worry, Teyla. Cleaning wounds is extremely time consuming. They are being very careful.” Martini checked her tablet. “Is it okay if we go through with your post-mission check-up? ”

“Yes, of course.”

They moved to the farthest exam bay and went through the usual routine of scans and blood samples. Martini tried to distract Teyla by asking questions about Torren’s new words and other toddler tricks he had recently mastered. Teyla kept up with her end of the conversation pretty well, but she couldn’t stop checking the clock on the wall.

Ronon came in with news that Torren was peacefully napping and Amelia would be happy to stay with him as long as needed. Martini dragged him over to have his own post-mission check-up, leaving Teyla alone with her spiraling thoughts.

All she could think about was John’s back—worried about how badly he might be hurt and angry at whoever had hurt him. She tried to steady herself by concentrating on her most recent positive experience with that part of John’s anatomy. This was definitely not the focus she would normally use to calm herself and meditate, but under the circumstances it was the best she could do.

She had only recently gained unimpeded access to all of his body, so she hadn’t had much time to explore that particular area until the night before he disappeared. She had finally convinced him to make love in her bed, while Torren slept in his crib tucked away behind a colorful Athosian screen in what John called the kid’s corner of her quarters.

The torture of having to be quiet added a certain element of excitement, he whispered in her ear afterwards. But, he teasingly warned her, there were certain things—things that she would enjoy very much—that he would like to do but would not, because there was no way she would be able to muffle her screams of pleasure.

Taking that as a personal challenge (and safe in the knowledge of how soundly Torren slept), she had dared John to keep quiet while she took certain liberties with his body. Always the hero, he maintained a practically inaudible volume despite her concentrated attack. The effort had definitely exhausted him so he could not immediately retaliate. By the time she returned with a cup of water from the bathroom, he had fallen asleep on his side, facing away from her, the sheet barely covering his hips.

She quietly sat next to him to enjoy the view. John’s back had less hair than his chest and almost no scars. The constellation of tiny marks on his left shoulder blade reminded her of when the Attero device destroyed the Control room and almost killed him and Radek. She remembered the plea in John’s eyes when he had asked her to please leave the area before the stargate exploded. He stayed with Radek who must have frantically tried until the last second to divert enough power for the shields to absorb the full brunt of the blast. When the entire Atlantis base shook from the ultra-violent release of energy, she had thought that both men had been killed. To her immeasurable relief, they found Radek shaken but completely unharmed and John (who had covered him with his body) only slightly injured. Another one of many scares she had about his welfare—yet, none compared with the present one.

That night, John’s smooth toned flesh begged to be caressed and she had resisted the temptation, afraid of waking him. He looked so peaceful and he definitely needed to rest. It had been a tiring day, even before their bedroom exertions. When she spooned tight against his back, he had murmured something, partly sweet and mostly incoherent. It pleased her immensely that he was so comfortable in her presence to drop every vestige of military alertness while sleeping with her in the safety of Atlantis. She draped her arm around his waist and placed her cheek against his back. That glorious night, she fell asleep to the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing.

“Teyla? I am so sorry to wake you up,” Martini said. “But I just heard that Becket and Keller are almost done. They should be out in a few minutes with news.”

Teyla sat up from where she had fallen asleep slouched across two seats. Someone had covered her with a blanket. She must have dozed off for a while. According to the infirmary clock, John had been in surgery for nearly four hours. A fresh rush of anxiety cleared her mind of any lingering drowsiness.


	17. Chapter 17

Teyla paced back and forth to get some blood flowing in her legs, which tingled from having fallen asleep in an awkward position. It felt odd that she was the one visibly nervous, while Ronon remained sitting in his chair. At least on the surface, he looked much more calm than she felt. Somehow, their roles had reversed.

A few minutes later, Marie came over from the surgery wing of the infirmary.

“Doctors Keller and Beckett would like you to join them in the back conference room,” she looked tired and slightly perturbed. Marie usually maintained an aura of calm efficiency under the most stressful medical emergencies. This was the first time Teyla had seen her look even remotely flustered by her work.

Teyla and Ronon exchanged a meaningful glance. This request seemed a little unusual. In the past, the doctors came to them in the waiting room to report on their teammate’s health status.

“Is Sheppard okay?” said Ronon as they followed Marie.

“He’s out of surgery and in recovery. You’ll be able to see him soon. I’ll let the doctors brief you on his status.” Marie’s vague answer did nothing to reassure Teyla.

Jennifer and Carson met them in a small room near the surgical suites. Mr. Woolsey walked in before they had a chance to start asking them questions. He closed the door. No one sat at the chairs placed around the oblong table.

“How is Colonel Sheppard?” Mr. Woolsey said. “You had him in surgery for quite a while. I didn’t realize he was that seriously injured.”

“None of us had until Carson began to examine him,” said Jennifer. When she glanced her way, Teyla caught a nervous flicker before she composed her face and continued. “Four days ago, Colonel Sheppard sustained a narrow but very deep arrow wound on his right bicep. While initially treated and sutured, the wound was aggravated and has become infected. We had to surgically clean and repair the damaged tissue. He also has over a dozen long welts and lacerations on his back. Some of these are also infected and required surgical debridement.”

“How did his back get hurt?” Ronon said, faster than Teyla in asking one of the many questions that preoccupied both of them.

“John said his captor used a leather whip on him. The wounds on his back are consistent with a particularly vicious flogging.” Carson sighed. “I’m sorry to say that the Colonel had a very rough few days.”

Jennifer continued, “His other injuries include deep lacerations and abrasions on his wrists and ankles caused by tight restraints—some type of natural rope judging by the fibers embedded in the deeper lesions. He has two contusions to the back of the head, which we are monitoring. There are no signs of concussion or other brain injuries. He also has many severe bruises and contusions primarily on his torso and thighs; several shallower knife cuts on his right arm, back, chest, and right leg; a hairline rib fracture and initial signs of pneumonia. He is dehydrated and malnourished, and has a low-grade fever. In addition to giving him fluids, we have started him on broad spectrum antibiotics and oxygen. We are running tests to identify the cause of infection.”

Teyla had learned a lot about medicine from Carson and Jennifer. She understood how grave a wound infection could become if not stopped at its earliest stages. As she heard John’s lengthening list of injuries, she felt ill at the thought of what he must have endured during his captivity.

“When will he come out of the anesthesia? We need to talk to him and find out what happened as soon as possible,” said Mr. Woolsey.

Jennifer looked apologetic as she said, “The anesthesia should be wearing off within the hour. We have pre-medicated him with anti-emetics to hopefully prevent anesthesia-induced nausea and vomiting. He will be very groggy and in pain when he wakes up. While his major organs have not been directly damaged, his injuries are extremely painful. We might have to sedate him to keep him absolutely immobile for the skin grafts to start healing the most damaged areas of his back.”

“Did he say anything about who did this to him?” Teyla tried to stop picturing how ravaged John’s body might be. She forced herself to maintain her usual calm, composed presence. This usually was not so difficult. Inwardly, she desperately wanted to be with John, even to just lightly touch him and make sure that he was really back.

“He said that he and Kharla escaped from a planet called Khamala Prime,” Mr. Woolsey said. “He mentioned that the story was complicated and asked if it could wait until after the infirmary check-ups.”

“Wow, Sheppard must have felt really bad to volunteer to see you guys first,” said Ronon, a slight smirk briefly lightened his worried expression.

Carson made a strangled sound that drew Teyla’s attention. Like Marie before, both he and Jennifer were acting strangely; their demeanor radiated an uncharacteristic tension. There was obviously something more to John’s story that made them extremely uncomfortable.

Teyla crossed her arms and held them tightly, as if to protect herself from whatever was to come. “Carson, what else did John say to you?”

Before he had a chance to speak up, Jennifer cut in, “Carson and I have been wracking our brains, trying to figure out what regulations apply to this kind of situation where there are some clear privacy issues. Of course, as commander of this expedition, you Mr. Woolsey have a right to all available information on John’s health status. We believe that so does Teyla, given that Colonel Sheppard recently made her his Health Care Proxy. Would you agree, Mr. Woolsey?”

“I am not sure where this is going, but yes, by naming Ms. Emmagan his Health Care Proxy Colonel Sheppard has essentially given permission for her to have full access to his medical records when he is unable to make decisions,” said Mr. Woolsey. “I am not sure if this would be legally recognized on Earth, but here in Atlantis it certainly is valid.”

Teyla found this line of discussion rather mystifying. Jennifer must have noticed her confusion, “Sorry about this Teyla, but this is new ground for us and we want to make sure that we are doing the right thing for Sheppard.”

“I don’t understand but please go on,” Teyla said automatically. Whatever they were doing, she had no doubt that Carson and Jennifer had good intentions. The more she learned about their laws and regulations that governed them, the more she found them to be extremely complicated, often impractical and not infrequently contradictory. She hoped they quickly resolved the issue at hand; whatever it might be.

Jennifer continued, “So legally speaking, Ronon does not have a right to hear Sheppard’s more sensitive medical information. Correct?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Woolsey. “But my understanding is that squad members have traditionally been given much wider access to this information, especially in a combat zone, which is what Atlantis is considered to be. What makes this situation any different?”

“Jennifer, are you saying that I should leave?” asked Ronon. He stopped leaning against the wall and stood up straight.

Teyla could see that he was trying to mask his hurt feelings. This was not the time for a big argument about the applicability of strange regulations. When John had asked her for permission to put her name in as his Health Care Proxy, he had explained to her a little bit of what it meant. “Mr. Woolsey, as John’s proxy, could I give my permission for Ronon to hear this information?”

“Uhm, yes that would be fine, if you think that’s what Colonel Sheppard would want,” he said.

“Yes, I do because we are his family,” she said without specifically naming herself, Ronon and Rodney as the “we” part of that sentence, primarily not to remind Jennifer of Rodney’s absence. “Carson, please continue.”

Carson’s face colored slightly. “Teyla, he didn’t give me many specifics… and I really don’t know what is the best way to say this, but here it goes. Colonel Sheppard said that he was kidnapped to provide what he called ‘sexual entertainment’ for a woman. He told me that he was sexually assaulted, more than once. Physically the damage is not severe and he will heal but…”

Shocked by those words, Teyla lost track of what else Carson said. This violation of a person’s body was something that very rarely happened among the Athosians. Sexual intimacy was a gift to be shared among willing participants, never to be taken without consent. The few cases she had heard about were of children being used in a perverse way by a relative or family friend. While nothing like that had happened during her leadership, she knew that the culprits were always promptly punished and banished. To learn that John, her friend and the man she had finally opened her heart and body to, had been tortured and violated in such a way seemed unfathomable.

Ronon’s voice exploded in anger. “Who is this woman? She must die.”

“John said her name was Vernara Alk, Alka–something. He made it sound as if she was already dead.” Carson said.

At that name, memories trickled out from the farthest recesses of Teyla’s mind. Certain that she had heard that name before, she tried to remember the occasion.

“Vernara Alkamade from Khamala Prime,” she finally said. “I remember her from Chancellor Zarneon’s gala two months ago. She had cornered John and clearly made him uncomfortable. I walked over and asked him to accompany me and meet some of the other delegates. I am certain that John did not speak to her again. Why would she do such a thing?”

There was more to that story that Teyla did not want to share. She had been across the large entertainment room when she noticed many of the women and a few of the men appraising John with sidelong glances as he walked over to the refreshment table. He had offered to get her a drink while she conversed with four traders who had expressed an interest in supplying Atlantis with food staples. John looked very handsome in his dark blue uniform decorated with silver buttons and embellished with colorful ribbons on his chest. Earlier, he had expressed annoyance at being asked to wear what he called his dress blues. Mr. Woolsey had insisted. She secretly agreed with the choice. While she certainly enjoyed looking at John in his everyday clothing, she found the sight of him in the elegant uniform extremely appealing.

Her amusement at the appreciative looks he got promptly dissipated when she saw a tall woman block his return. Teyla had been too far away to hear her words, but John’s suddenly embarrassed face and uncomfortable mannerisms were unmistakable. Teyla saw him repeatedly try to extricate himself from the situation. When the woman had moved close enough to brush against him with her ample, barely clad front, Teyla decided to intervene. John seemed very grateful that she had ‘rescued’ him. With a joke that she had not quite understood he declined to tell her what the woman had said to him.

Throughout the rest of the evening, she noticed the woman scowling in their direction. She made some inquiries among the other guests and learned her name, and that she was a member of a powerful family that ruled parts of a planet she knew nothing about. With dismay, Teyla recalled that she had initially intended to learn more about this woman, but later decided against it thinking that her growing feelings for John were making her jealous and unjustifiably paranoid. She could have never imagined that such a small incident would lead to John being abducted and viciously treated to satisfy someone’s depraved sexual appetite.

The rest of the meeting left her in an anxious daze—deluged by a cascade of difficult to process information. She tried to stop thinking about the repercussions of a rape on John’s emotional state to concentrate on the more immediate serious physical injuries. Carson and Jennifer mentioned that they had harvested epidermal stem cells and were now growing skin that they would graft onto the most severe of John’s wounds to help heal them. The part that she completely understood was that without these procedures there would be permanent deep scarring that would impede his upper-body mobility. John had recently told her that one of his deepest fears was that he would be hurt badly enough to be sent back to Earth—where he did not have and did not want to have a life. That had been one of the most revealing conversations she ever had with him. At the time, she had basically promised him that she and Ronon would never allow anyone to force him back to Earth, if he did not want to go. She had meant every word then; now her promise had more meaning than ever.

“I must see John now, please,” she interrupted. She had enough of talk.

Carson looked at her with a sympathetic face, “I’ll take you to him. I’m sure that they are done settling him in the recovery room.”

As the two of them left the room, Teyla heard Jennifer tell the others that they would be allowed to see John later. Ronon began to protest. Fortunately, their voices drifted away behind the closed door.

In the corridor, Carson did not say anything. He led her to a quiet recovery room; one of the ones set aside for the more seriously injured patients. After he entered the room and closed the door, he began talking to Marie who was checking monitors and adjusting plastic tubing from two fluid bags that hung from a pole on one side of the bed. Teyla didn’t follow their conversation, and not because the words they used were complex medical terms, but because she was solely focused on John.

If she just looked at his face, she could image that he was just sleeping. The small cuts around his lips, bruises on his cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes were no different than the remnants of countless previous missions. However, when her eyes strayed to the rest of his body that illusion burst like the soap bubbles that John had recently introduced to Torren.

He was lying on his left side, head cushioned by a pillow, left arm resting on the bed and his heavily bandaged right arm stretched out above it on a padded arm rest. A handful of gauze bandages were scattered across his upper chest and abdomen. Mottled bruises covered extensive areas between the bandages, the darkest on his lower ribs. A thin blanket hid his body from the hips down. From its shape, she could tell that pillows had been tucked between his knees and ankles.

She touched his left hand, careful to avoid the thick bandage around his wrist, and entwined her fingers with his. His skin felt slightly warm—she remembered that Jennifer had said that he had a low grade fever. A long rectangular bandage covered the underside of his left arm, from the elbow to just below his arm pit. She moved closer and gently ran her fingers through the dark, unruly hair. When her eyes, strayed past his shoulders, she gasped at the sight of the bloody flesh underneath the large opaque gelatinous rectangle covering most of his upper and lower back.

“Teyla, I know it looks bad, but we are fixing it. I promise,” said Carson. “We’ve cleaned the wounds and prepped them for the skin grafts which will take care of all that damage. By tomorrow, we’ll have grown enough replacement skin to repair all the most severely compromised areas. We have combined Earth techniques with Ancient knowledge to create a completely compatible replacement. When everything heals properly there’ll be only a few barely visible scars and nothing will impede his range of motion.”

Teyla let him continue with his explanation of this new skin grafting procedure. From what she understood, it was a truly a magnificent advance and she was very happy that John would benefit from it.

Tearing her sight away from John’s back, she noticed many small red marks on his neck, upper chest and sides. She instantly recognized them for what they were. However, love bites was a completely inappropriate word. John had called them something else—hockey … no hickey, which also sounded too cute. Interspersed between the various hickeys were several sets of parallel scratches. One of the longer ones followed the length of his arm, disappearing under the padding of white gauze around his left wrist. An image seared itself in Teyla’s mind—John tied up to a bed and that Alkamade woman all over his naked body, kissing, biting and sucking his skin, scratching him with her long fingernails, and then …   

“Carson, please help me understand what John has gone through, so that I can help him.” Maintaining her contact with John’s hand, Teyla pulled a chair close to the bed and sat on it. “I know that John was not a willing participant in what was done to him, but I do not understand how a woman could force herself on a man.”

Carson hesitated only for a few seconds before telling her what he knew. He blushed as he explained how certain devices could be used to force a man to maintain his readiness for intercourse against his will. Almost apologetically, he mentioned that there were also oral and topical medicines that could be used to enhance these effects. She had never heard of such things. The fact that someone had used them on John infuriated her. When he noticed the anger boiling up in her eyes, he told her repeatedly that John’s words implied that the woman who had done this was already dead. That provided little comfort.

Her eyes welled again with tears. She tasted their saltiness when one reached her lips. She felt somehow partly responsible for the cruelty her galaxy had inflicted on John. Just as quickly as that thought invaded her head, she imagined John chiding her about that, telling her that guilt was his domain not hers. With her free hand, she wiped the tears off her face. She wondered if this experience would be the one that might break his optimistic spirit.

“Teyla, you know how strong he is,” said Carson, as if responding to her thoughts. “He fought his way back to Atlantis. When I talked to him, he was in pain and sick, but definitely not broken. He was more worried about you and Rodney. He is going to be okay.”

“I know he will,” she said, certain that it was true and perfectly aware of how difficult this would be for both of them. Determined to help him, she forced herself to ask the next question. “Have you treated other men who were violated by women?”

“No, it’s pretty rare even on Earth. But I have dealt with boys and young men victimized by other males. Teyla, I wanted to also tell you …”

Teyla didn’t notice that Carson hadn’t completed his sentence. She felt John’s fingers move under her light grasp.

“I believe that he is waking up,” she leaned close to his face and brushed a lock of hair away from his brow. “John? John, can you hear me?”

He blinked repeatedly. His lips moved. She could barely understand his hoarse voice, “Teyla ‘re you okay?”

“Yes I am fine,” she could not help but smile at his typical first words. She lightly touched his forehead in an Athosian greeting. “I am so sorry John. We have been searching for you but …”

She did not know what other words to use to apologize for having failed to find him. Instead, she gently caressed his face. She was close enough to hear the slight wheeze in his breathing. His eyes flickered open. They were a pale brownish-green with the flecks of gold that had mesmerized her at first sight. He licked his dry lips. She offered him a small spoonful of ice chips from the cup Carson had given her. He let them melt in his mouth as he squinted at her with tired eyes.

“It’s okay… You couldn’t … have found me. It took longer than I’d wanted…but I got free.” He spoke haltingly, his voice barely audible. He let out a groan and tried to shift his body.

Carson intervened, “Easy John, try not to move. I just need to check a couple of things and then I am going to give you some more pain meds to help you sleep. You’ll have plenty of time to talk to Teyla later.”

While Teyla gently caressed his uninjured hand and arm, John mumbled one word answers to Carson’s questions. He was too tired to complain about the light in his eyes or the various tubes and lines attached to his body. Soon after Carson injected the pain medication into the intravenous line, she felt him relax.

Dark lashes fluttering, he struggled to keep his eyes open, “Teyla, I didn’t want to… I… I couldn’t stop her.”

Teyla felt her heart being squeezed, “I know John. I know you could not stop her until you did. All will be well. Please sleep now.”

“I missed you,” he said before he finally let himself go to the encroaching slumber.

Teyla sat there, keeping vigil. She focused on the now relaxed features of his face. He looked so uncharacteristically vulnerable. She stayed until Ronon insisted that she go check on Torren and take the opportunity to finally shower. He joked that she had probably knocked John out with her overpowering scent.

She came back after a couple of hours to relieve Ronon. After a bath, Torren had fallen asleep for the night, happy that his da had returned. To pre-empt a toddler tantrum, she had explained that they could not yet visit John in the infirmary because he was a little bit hurt, very tired and needed lots of rest and medicines. Jennifer had brought her some food from the mess hall. Without needing to be asked, she offered to stay and watch over her son for the night but only if she ate. Teyla did not feel hungry but complied, grateful to have such a good friend. While she ate, they did not talk about John because of Torren’s presence. Before leaving, she impulsively hugged Jennifer and reassured her that they would find Rodney.

After cleansing her mind of all the insidious thoughts about what she would have done if she had gotten her hands on the Alkamade woman, Teyla felt a little calmer. She fell asleep slumped forward, her arms  cradling her head in a small space on the edge of John’s bed. She had let go of his hand afraid that she would hurt him if she jerked unexpectedly, like she did sometimes when falling asleep.

She woke up startled by a whimper. She felt the heat emanating from John’s body even before she touched his scalding skin. After she called for assistance on the com, she tried to soothe him with words and light touches. Clearly delirious, he interjected his moans with incomprehensible phrases.

And then his voice rose, “Kharla please stop… no …no … don’t … don’t …. do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The conversation that John had with Teyla reveling one of his deepest fears occurred in the wonderful novel "The Lost" (Book 2 of the SGA Legacy series), which has many other wonderful scenes between the two of them.


	18. Chapter 18

She felt the give of Sheppard’s splitting skin as she dragged the knife across his back. The burst of crimson thickening each carefully carved line created a startling contrast to the pale flesh. The sight horrified her. She willed her hand to stop, but it was out of her control. It continued to cut line after line. The poor man’s back and her own arm became coated in blood. Vernara kept on praising and encouraging her. She tried to yell to her to shut up. No sound came out of her mouth. Relentlessly, her knife-wielding hand moved on to make another cut. A coppery smell permeated her nostrils. She couldn’t breathe.

Kharla bolted upright on the bed; her heart thundered in her chest. Taking big gulps of air through her mouth, she forced herself to calm down. It was just a dream, just a dream—she had not done it again. With shaky hands, she untangled the pale green blanket from her legs and pulled it all the way up to her chin. The chills running down her back were not due to the actually pleasant ambient temperature. The nightmare had felt so real. At least, once again, she had not screamed aloud. She had long mastered the art of being unobtrusive, even in her sleep, because of dire consequences whenever she inadvertently brought attention to herself.

This was the second terrifying dream in the span of a few hours. In the first one, she had relived the other unspeakable thing Vernara had made her do to Sheppard and to herself. Even though her mind had not wanted to, her body had splayed her legs open and essentially forced herself onto an unwilling man. By the time she had regained control of her limbs, it had been too late. In the nightmare, she could never get a hold of the knife. Despite all her efforts, it remained beyond her reach while their bodies were pounded together, over and over again. She squeezed her eyes shut to try to stop the recurring memories of her own pain and Sheppard’s horrified expression.

More than ever before, Kharla wished her parents were still alive. She longed to be wrapped by her mother’s tight embrace and hear her father’s reassuring voice tell her that things would be all right. It was pathetic that she had yet to let go of these childish yearnings. Her parents had been gone for a long time and she was a grown woman. She rested her chin on top of her knees and hugged her legs tightly against her stomach. The pain from her bruised body quickly ground her back to reality. This reality also felt like a dream—an unexpectedly good one.

Setting aside her dark memories, she concentrated on her present good fortune. First and foremost, she was safe from Vernara and her men—of that she was absolutely certain. Sheppard had kept his word and more. He had brought her to his base where everyone she met had been kind to her, so far, at least. His commander had even thanked her for helping his officer regain freedom.

Second, the healer Keller and one of her assistants had taken care of her knife wounds and other assorted injuries. After making sure she had no broken bones or internal damage, they gave her a medicine to soothe her achy body. It provided relief much more quickly than any of the remedies familiar to her.

Third, they had provided her with soft clean sleeping garments and this lovely curtained-off bed, set high above the scrupulously clean floor—such an imaginable luxury. She had been promised a warm meal, but she did not remember eating it. She must have fallen asleep before it arrived.

Now she was sitting comfortably in the infirmary of the fabled flying city of the Ancestors, Atlantis, located in the planet … well, she did not know the name of this world. Sheppard had not told her. Atlantis was unlike anywhere else she had been before. The sleek walls, floors and furniture were made of materials that had nothing in common with the wood, stone and brick she was familiar with. The surfaces were smooth and cool; the soft palette of colors calmed the senses. Everything was so beautiful and exotic. 

A slender hand tugged at the curtain around her bed; a pleasant woman’s face peaked in. She wore a white overcoat over the dark grey trousers and lighter grey short-sleeve shirt Kharla had seen on the other Atlantis healers she had met so far. A thick braid held back wavy dark brown hair.

“Good, you are awake. I am doctor Marina Martini. If it’s alright with you, I am going to check your vitals.” She pulled the curtain closed behind her. After she examined her face more carefully, the thin lines on her forehead scrunched up in concern, “That wasn’t very restful sleep, was it honey?”

Kharla decided against denying the truth. She touched it up instead, “I am not accustomed to this kind of bed.”

“I know what you mean. When I first came here, it took me a while to get used to these beds too,” Martini scrutinized the screen of the small metallic box that the other healer, Doctor Keller, had called a medical scanner. She smiled. “Your heart rate, blood pressure and respiration are fine. The bruises are just going to take a while to heal. I think that some food and more rest would do you good. How much pain are you in? You are due for another dose.”

“I am fine,” Kharla said. “Would you please tell me how is Colonel Sheppard? I haven’t seen him since we first arrived in the infirmary.”

Martini’s expression turned more serious. “Some of his wounds are infected. Doctors Keller and Beckett are taking care of him.”

Kharla had been hoping for more details, she was very concerned about Sheppard’s health. She did not know how he had found the willpower to ignore the pain he must have been suffering during their escape. At the few stops they made, she had tried to clean up his wounds as best as she could with the little time and few supplies at hand. Clearly her efforts had been insufficient. Something else for her to feel guilty about.

She could see in Martini’s face the temptation to ask her about what happened to her and the colonel. She knew that at some point soon, she would have to answer questions. Probably not Martini, but someone, would want her to account for how they had met and escaped. Completely unsure of what she would say, she wanted to delay that discussion as long as possible. She needed time to think.

“May I wash, please?” she said.

That’s all it took to distract the healer from questioning her. Martini directed her to the small chamber that Kharla remembered having used a few hours earlier. Or was it the night before? She did not know how long she had slept. An assistant healer named Beverly handed her two large clean towels and a change of clothes. She also showed her how to use the cleansing apparatus, which she called the shower.

Standing underneath the hot downpour, Kharla marveled at the abundance of water set at the perfect temperature to ease her sore muscles. Unfortunately, as she soaped her body, the awful memories of how she got the maroon bruises in her inner thighs flashed in her head. She had not told Keller or Martini about the pain between her legs. It wasn’t so bad now. Too ashamed and confused about what happened, she did not want to explain it to anyone. She hardly understood it herself.

While she always hoped that her first time would be of her own choice, realistically she had known that a master or mistress might take advantage of her servitude and force her to submit to their pleasure. Given her age, it was astounding that it had not happened before. Indeed, she had been lucky with Healer Lagona, her no-nonsense first mistress who had worked her hard, treated her fairly and, fortunately, had no sons (only a rather unpleasant daughter). Kharla had hoped that once she was free from the restrictions imposed by her servile state, she would be able to explore relations with the other sex and eventually find love, like her parents had.

Even in her wildest, darkest dreams, Kharla never imagined that her new mistress would fog her mind to such a state that she would effectively force herself onto a shackled man. The logical part of her mind insisted that it had not been her fault because Vernara had controlled her body. Her heart, though, argued that she should have been able to fight off the compulsion that Vernara had somehow instilled in her. How could she have been so weak?

She looked at the palm of her hands and flexed her fingers to prove to herself that they were under her own command. She could not comprehend how someone had made her do such things. When she had become Lagona’s indentured servant, she was not given a choice to learn the healing arts. Lenora had declared it her duty and so it was. However, soon enough Kharla had grown to love it and consider it her true calling. Lagona understood that and taught her much more than would have been necessary for her to simply function as an assistant. In fact, in the few months before her death, Lagona had started to treat her more like an apprentice than a servant. She had even mentioned that within another year of training, Kharla might be ready to take the healer vows and become a journeyman healer. She already had memorized the words of the vows. Back in Lagona’s household, she used to repeat them to herself each night after she tallied down the days left in her bond repayment.

She now knew herself to be completely unworthy of those vows. Instead of never doing harm, she had handled an unwilling person in intimate places, before torturing him with a knife and participating in his violation. Her conduct would be considered unspeakable for anyone and worse than that for someone who professed herself to be a healer, supposedly devoted to ministering to the ill and injured. In her view, the fact that her own body had been raped paled in relation to the guilt she felt for the crimes she had committed. Tears now streaming down her face, she turned to wash them off as quickly as they appeared.

Another ominous thought occurred to Kharla. There was the distinct possibility that Vernara might have used her mind-controlling and memory-altering concoctions to make her do something like this before. Kharla furiously reviewed her recollections of the two months she had spent under Vernara’s clutches. She did remember tending to whip lashes and shallow knife wounds of two men before Sheppard. The fact that she could not recollect having participated in any of Vernara’s bed chamber sessions with these previous captives did not reassure her much.

She had no knowledge of what Vernara could have used to control her and how it worked. How could she be sure that she had not previously taken part in such debauchery? Was the trauma of being snapped out of the mind-controlled state in the midst of her own rape the only reason that she minutely remembered what she had done to Sheppard? The pain of the experience had felt like a first time, but how could she be certain? She dimly remembered that Vernara had insinuated something about her wanting Sheppard to be her first. Was she being truthful or had she been lying? Instead of finding answers, Kharla’s thinking only served to dredge up a mounting number of difficult questions.

Mercifully, a loud knock on the doorway startled her out of these depressing speculations.

“Kharla? Are you okay in there?” Martini sounded worried.

“Yes, I am fine,” she said loud enough to be heard over the noise made by the falling water. She took a deep breath to pull herself together. “Sorry but this—what do you call it?—this shower is marvelous. I will hurry now.”

“Oh, that’s fine. Take your time,” Martini said.

While she quickly soaped her body (she could not remember if she had already done it), another thought snaked its way to the forefront of her lengthening list of worries. Having assisted Lagona in many births, she knew perfectly well the possible consequences of carnal relations between a man and a woman. With dread, she stroked her lower belly. Flat as always. It would take many weeks for anything to show. But surely she would somehow sense something different about herself if she were with child? She felt nothing beyond the soreness from her bruises and cuts. Thinking back, she recalled that her last menses occurred soon after her arrival in Khamala Prime. She had always been irregular, so that information was no help. Undoubtedly, the healers here in Atlantis had a way to determine if a woman were pregnant. She considered asking, but quickly rejected the notion. Too many questions would be raised by the request. Kharla resigned herself to waiting for nature to take its course. 

After she finished getting dressed, Beverly showed her how to dry her hair with an apparatus that blew hot air. The helpful woman gave her a comb and a stretchy ribbon to hold her hair away from her face. Everybody was being so nice to her. She did not know if this was their normal behavior toward needy total strangers or if they were especially grateful to her for having helped Sheppard escape his captivity. If they only knew all that she had done.

Two new people awaited her outside the washing chamber. The first was a distinguished older woman wearing the by now familiar Atlantis charcoal grey uniform. Kharla had never before seen an adult female with such short hair. The tightly cropped haircut framed her high-boned features perfectly, giving her a very elegant appearance.

“Good morning, Kharla,” the woman exuded an aura of friendly calmness. “I am Doctor Eva Robinson. On behalf of Mister Woolsey, I would like to show you a little around Atlantis while we make our way to the mess hall to have some breakfast. You look like you could use a good meal.”

The mention of breakfast and a good meal sounded very promising to her, mostly overriding the confusion and apprehension brought about by the reference to a “mess” hall. She started formulating a question about what that meant, when she noticed the younger woman standing a few steps behind Robinson. She wore the same dark black military uniform that she had seen on Sheppard’s soldiers when they arrived in Atlantis. While she did not have a weapon in her hands, this soldier had a pistol strapped to her leg.

“Am I a prisoner?” Kharla startled herself by speaking the words aloud.

“No, of course not,” said Robinson. “Sergeant Mehra here is just going to tag along because of strict security rules we have in Atlantis. Something about no visitors being allowed into the halls unless escorted by military personnel.”

The sergeant stepped closer to Kharla, her initially stern face breaking into a pleasant smile. “Hello Kharla, you can call me Dusty,” she said before turning to address Robinson. “These are Colonel Sheppard’s standing orders, ma’am. And I haven’t had breakfast yet either.”

They walked down several brightly lit hallways and entered one of the transporters. Earlier, Kharla had been too tired and overloaded with new experiences to understand Doctor Beckett’s explanation for these moving-but-not-moving chambers. After they exited the transporter, they entered the largest chamber she had seen thus far in Atlantis. Bypassing the numerous groups of people eating and chatting at the tables, her eyes were captured by the view from the floor to ceiling windows that occupied an entire wall. Tall, gleaming metal and glass towers stood on snow-covered interconnected platforms that were surrounded by deep blue water. She had never before seen anything so majestic and utterly alien.

Robinson snapped her out of her revelry by explaining the available food items. Despite being convinced that she had no appetite, the smell of food made her feel very hungry. On her tray, she placed a bowl filled with a warm porridge-like substance, a couple of pastries and a familiar looking fruit. Dusty got her a glass of water. Robinson gave her a cup and showed her how to mix the powdery contents of a small package with scalding hot water to produce a pleasant smelling, hot herbal beverage.

After they sat at an empty table close to one of the windows, Kharla noticed large chunks of ice bobbing in the foamy waves. She remember stories her mother had told her about the large bodies of water called oceans that she had seen in some of her trips through the Stargate. Kharla had made her parents promise to take her to see those places when she was a little older. They and her entire community had been culled before that ever happened.

While reminiscing and wolfing down her food, Kharla realized that she had missed much of the previous few minutes of conversation.

“Pretty amazing view, isn’t it?” said Dusty. “Too bad it’s so darn cold.”

“Is this your home planet? Where is the land?” Kharla said.

Kharla listened intently while Robinson and Dusty explained how the city of the Ancestors had been flown through space to land in this very cold, nameless and previously uninhabited planet. She understood that they had run out of the fuel needed to travel to a better planet. She also gathered that they had no intention of telling her anything about their real home world. She did not begrudge them holding such secrets.

A little boy scampered up to the table and pulled on Dusty’s sleeve. Kharla hadn’t realized that there were children in Atlantis.

“Dusty, where’s my da?” His voice rose as he continued, “I want to see my da.”

“Hey, Torren. Don’t worry, you are going to see your dad soon,” Dusty scooped him up and sat him on her lap, her affection for the boy obvious. “The Colonel is just really tired and Doctor Keller needs to fix his booboos. You have to be patient. Okay, little soldier?”

Torren pulled up the sleeve from his left arm to show a small colorful bandage on his elbow. “I’ve a booboo too. Is da going to get a Band-Aid like t’is one?”

Immediately grasping the identity of the boy’s father, Kharla’s mind reeled at the thought that Sheppard had a son. She noticed Dusty’s slight hesitation before she answered, “Yes, I think so. Where is your mama? Is she getting food for you?”

Following the direction he was pointing at, Kharla noticed a small but powerful looking woman walk toward them carrying a tray of food. The tired shadows under her eyes did not mar her beauty.

Once she reached their table, she said, “Torren you are not supposed to run in the mess hall, remember? And you had agreed to help me carry your breakfast.” The way she looked at her son indicated that she was not truly mad at him. She was just trying to reinforce an often repeated point.

“Sorry mama,” he said, batting long eyelashes framing luminous brown eyes.

While the boy didn’t look anything like Sheppard, Kharla could clearly see the resemblance between mother and son. Although his hair was darker and lacked the red overtones, they shared the same lovely coppery skin color and the line of the eyes and nose. However, she could not imagine the mother ever producing such a wide-eyed endearing expression, designed to erase the will to reprimand him for any mischief.

“Kharla, let me introduce you to Teyla Emmagan,” said Robinson. “Teyla is an Athosian leader and warrior who has been working with the Atlantis expedition for several years. Among many things, she is also Mister Woolsey’s trusted advisor …”

Her mind swirling with emotions, Kharla half listened to the rest of the introductions. During one of their brief conversations held while waiting for a stargate to dial, Sheppard had mentioned the name Teyla as someone who might be able to help her find a place to settle. She had detected a certain degree of fondness when he said her name. Clearly, the two were a couple and with the boy they formed a family unit.

Kharla completely lost her appetite. Now more than ever, she regretted that she had not gotten a chance to discuss with Sheppard what had happened between them. They should have at least come to an agreement about what they would tell others. She did not want to cause trouble for herself and, especially, for him.

She managed to smile and politely acknowledged Teyla’s greeting. If she had thought a conversation with Sheppard would have been difficult, the one that she would soon have with Emmagan would be even harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cold planet currently hosting Atlantis is from the book "Homecoming" (book one of the Legacy series). I also borrowed the Dr. Eva Robinson character from these books. While sergeant Dusty Mehra is a canon character, Dr. Martini is my own creation.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Along with the canon SGA characters, the Dr. Eva Robinson character is also not mine. She is from the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by Joe Graham, Amy Griswold and Melissa Scott.

Standing frozen against the wall of the recovery room, Teyla watched Carson, Marie and another nurse swarm around John’s bed. The clipped phrases they exchanged made it clear that they were quite concerned about his unexpectedly high fever. They administered a sedative and fitted an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. With quick, well-practiced movements, they stripped off the blanket and placed cooling packs in strategic places against his skin. It felt extremely disconcerting to witness those quick professional hands handle John in such an intimate fashion. One small comfort was that John’s unconscious state spared him from this additional disquieting experience.

Since now John lay bare, except for a scattering of bandages, Teyla saw the previously covered dark bruises low on his hips, upper thighs and pubic triangle—which she could not help but notice had been denuded of its mat of curly hair. While she was not the type of person who normally used coarse language, that sight made her soundlessly recite every single expletive in the Athosian repertoire and all the ones she had learned from her friends and associates in Atlantis. She did not think that Keller and Carson would have ordered such a procedure. She hoped that Vernara’s death had been slow and painful—an unlikely scenario, given that John was far from the vindictive type.

Despite the distinct feeling that she was intruding on his privacy, she continued to scrutinize John’s exposed body. Certain atypical contusions irrevocably drew her attention. They were the missing pieces of a puzzle she did not even know she had been trying to solve. Some of these bruises looked like partial finger and hand prints. The larger ones had been indisputably made by a person much bulkier than the tall Alkamade woman they had the misfortune to encounter at that fateful reception. Clearly, males had also manhandled John; however, a conventional beating would not have produced this pattern of marks. With a sick feeling in her stomach, Teyla remembered that Carson had meant to tell her something else about what had been done to John. It finally dawned on her that in all likelihood Vernara was not the only person who had sexually assaulted him. She took a deep cleansing breath to try to relieve the nauseous feeling rising in her gut.

“Teyla, please, you need to go,” Carson stepped in front of her, blocking her view. “We are bringing his temperature down and we have to re-check all the wound sites. You can’t be here now.”

“But why has his temperature suddenly risen so high? You were giving him antibiotics,”” Teyla said, maintaining her focus on the most immediate concern.

“Sometimes bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics can take over an infection. We have to run tests to be sure. He is also showing signs that the infection may have entered his blood stream. We are going to treat him with more powerful antibiotics. I’ll let you know what is going on as soon as we have more information. We’ll take good care of him, Teyla.” Carson gently led her to the doorway.

“Of course,” where the only words that came out of her mouth in reply. Her mind understood the logic behind his request; her body did not want to move. She did not want to leave John again. She knew people who had died from such uncontrolled infections. Part of her believed that if she stayed she could help anchor him here; if he strayed again from her sight he might slip away. Immediately, she berated herself for such irrational thoughts. The medical team needed room to work and Carson wanted to spare her witnessing what they had to do. After one more glance, she stepped out into the corridor.

She stood there, once again with her back pressed against the wall for support. Torn between the desire to kick something or scream to release her raging emotions, she opted to take stock of all that she knew about John’s captivity. He had been shoot with an arrow, drugged, beaten, cut with a knife, flogged and repeatedly sexually assaulted—but most importantly, she reminded herself, he successfully escaped. All those torturous and demoralizing experiences had not changed John’s essential nature of a courageous fighter with a finely honed (and, unfortunately, continually tested) survival instinct. The indelible evidence of his inner strength reassured her—John would be fine, eventually.

Nevertheless, his recent words reverberated in her head. He had been pleading for Kharla to stop doing something. Even in the most extreme of situations, she had rarely if ever heard John speak like that, desperate, almost begging. Were these just nonsensical words spoken in delirium or had something happened between them? If Kharla had maliciously done something to him, why would he have helped her escape and brought her to Atlantis?

As soon as she thought it, she realized what a foolish question that was. After all, this was John Sheppard—the man who had managed to make an ally of a Wraith after that Wraith had fed on him multiple times. This Wraith brought John to the brink of death and, in an unprecedented act, fully restored his life. That was just one extreme example of how John could form alliances with the most unthinkable individuals and in the strangest of circumstances. With some exceptions of course. What was that Earth saying that Elizabeth had occasionally recited? (probably to tease John or, more likely, Rodney)—something about the exception proves the rule. Indeed, as a general rule, John’s unique combination of looks, charm, intelligence, stubborn optimism and bravery had helped him befriend all kinds of people in Pegasus, including herself.

“Teyla, why are you out here? What’s going on with Sheppard?” she had not heard Ronon approach. They had agreed that he would come in the morning to relieve her. He was early.

“His fever rose to a very high level during the night,” she said. “Carson asked me to leave so that they could work on bringing it under control. He is worried that the infection has gone into his blood.”

“Oh … but it will be okay, the docs will take care of him,” Ronon’s firm tone embodied how, during the past few years, Beckett and Keller had earned his trust and friendship. She liked seeing that in Ronon. It amazed her how this man—who had suffered tragic losses and had been forced into a brutal solitary existence for seven years—had managed to make a life for himself as part of Atlantis, with a slowly but steadily widening circle of friends.

Normally, she shared Ronon’s great confidence in their Earth friends’ mastery of advanced forms of medicine. Currently, that was not the case. She knew that everyone and everything had its limits, even the combined powers of Earth and Lantean advanced medicine. “John is very ill. He was delirious and his skin felt as hot as fire.”

“Teyla, you know Sheppard, he’ll fight this. He made it this far. He won’t give up now,” she heard Ronon’s firm conviction. He believed this and he would not lie to her to make her feel better. He continued, “I’ll stay here. You go see Torren. He’s still asleep in your quarters; Amelia is watching him. You should rest a bit before he wakes up for breakfast.”

“Thank you, Ronon. You are a very good friend,” Teyla felt strangely honored and touched for being the recipient of such a long speech from him. For an instant, she considered talking to him about what John had gone through to get a male perspective on what to do to help him deal with the experience. On second thought, clearly this was not the time and she was not the person to discuss this with Ronon. Maybe, when he felt better, John would talk to him about it. Or more likely not. That was for the two of them to decide. She knew that their friendship ran deep (probably, just as deep as John and Rodney’s), but she had no clue about the kinds of things they discussed in private. Despite how perceptive everybody thought she was, she still hit a solid wall when trying to delve too deeply into the male mind.

She decided to go along with Ronon’s plan for her. While she did not want to be far from John, she needed to take care of her son. And despite sleeping a few hours in John’s room, she still felt exhausted. Her sleep had been restless. She woke up a few times with her neck bent into painful positions and once when there was a slight change in the pattern of sounds from the machines monitoring John’s vital signs.

Lying in bed a little later, her worries for John’s health and mental state made a strong resurgence. She was trying to imagine how deeply he would be emotionally affected and what she could possibly do to help him. In the brief conversation she had with him, he appeared to be his usual self, acting in character through his drug-induced wooziness. The real test would come when he felt better. Would he fall into his old pattern and barricade himself behind an emotionless barrier camouflaged with sardonic humor? She could easily imagine him doing that, like what happened after they lost Elizabeth. This time, though, she would not let him, too much was at stake for both of them. First of all though, the infection had to be stopped and that was completely out of her hands.

It took quite a while to cleanse her mind enough to fall asleep, but she managed it. All too soon, she heard Torren slip into her bed. He had started doing that about two weeks ago, waking up in the morning and tottering over to snuggle in bed with her and John. It had startled John the first time, but he quickly recovered and pretended to be still asleep, mumbling words and snoring loudly. Torren had laughed so much, he wet the diaper that he had managed to keep dry all night.

Enamored by the routine, Torren and John relished replaying it every morning—she feared that she would grow tired of it long before the two of them did. She hated to generalize, but males seemed to like repetitive silly jokes so much more than females. Still, this was a small price to endure for her son’s happiness and the rare pleasure of seeing John act so carefree. The way the two of them had bonded, made Teyla’s heart swell with contentment. John had completely filled the gap created by Kanaan’s self-imposed sparser presence as a father. Because of that the past few days without John had been difficult and confusing for Torren. She did not know how she was going to tell him that he could not see his da yet.

Somehow, while they got quickly washed and dressed she managed to distract him enough to avoid the topic. In the mess hall, they were in the midst of selecting breakfast items when something or someone caught his attention. Without a word to her, he scampered away. She wasn’t worried. Everyone in Atlantis enjoyed interacting with Torren and they were accustomed to keeping an eye out for him to make sure he did not get into any trouble. Surprisingly for a child his age, he seldom did.

She spotted him quickly enough. He was sitting in Dusty’s lap at a table shared with Dr. Robinson and a young woman Teyla had never seen before. Suspecting her identify, she caught up with them.

During Dr. Robinson’s introduction, Teyla sensed the girl’s nervousness in her presence. Uncertain of the reason for this, she smiled and did her best to be friendly and reassuring. This usually worked very well in making people feel at ease in her presence.

“I am very pleased to meet you Kharla. I am very grateful that you helped Colonel Sheppard return to us,” she said.

“Without him I would never have managed to escape that horrible place,” As she spoke, Kharla’s eyes looked haunted by dark memories. Knowing what John had endured in his few days of captivity, Teyla did not even want to imagine what this young woman might have experienced there. Kharla continued, “I helped him a little, but he got us out. He is very brave. How is …”

Teyla noticed Kharla’s gaze suddenly dart toward Torren. She stopped herself from completing the question. Apparently, she has some good sense about what could be discussed in the presence of a child.

Sensing that they needed to talk, Dusty said, “Hey Torren, I’m still hungry. If it’s okay with your mother, do you want to come and help me pick out something else to eat?”

“Okay, mama?” Torren turned to look at her. It was funny how selective he was in deciding when to follow the simple rules of good manners she was trying to instill in him. Sometimes she wondered if he had a master plan for how best to manipulate her. Parenthood was definitely an interesting and very worthwhile challenge.

“Certainly and thank you for asking,” she said, not voicing the ‘more or less nicely’ that she was thinking.

Dusty held Torren’s hand as they left the table and headed toward the food displays. As soon as they were out of hearing range Kharla said, “How is Colonel Sheppard? I would very much like to speak to him when he is able.”

Just before coming to the mess hall while Torren used the toilet (he had recently decided to try it in private), Teyla had discreetly contacted Ronon via the com for an update. John’s health status had not changed. Ronon had put a positive spin to that bit of no news. She had decided to go with it for the moment. It helped her keep a cheerful appearance around Torren.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said. “His temperature rose unexpectedly during the night. He will not be able to talk for some time. The doctors are keeping him sedated while they wait for the blood poisoning medication to take control of the infection.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Kharla. “I tried to clean his wounds, but there was so little time during the escape.”

“I am sure that getting away was much more important at the time,” said Teyla. She was actually amazed that John had remained still long enough for Kharla to bandage him up during their escape. This seemingly timid person must have some hidden persuasive powers.

“Kharla, I understand that this will be difficult for you, but it would help us tremendously if you would tell us all you know about what happened to Colonel Sheppard on Khamala Prime and how you two escaped,” said Dr. Robinson. “Mister Woolsey needs this information to decide on the need for a military or diplomatic response. And since Colonel Sheppard will not be able to give us a mission report for another day or so, you are our only source of information.”

Teyla noticed that Kharla paled slightly at this request. The young woman put her cup of tea down on the table, “Yes, of course I will speak to you of what I know. I was a bonded servant in Lady Vernara’s household, I… “

“Oh, we don’t need to talk about this now. We will do it after breakfast in my office,” Dr. Robinson interrupted her. “Please, you must finish your breakfast now or Dr. Keller will be angry at me for disrupting your meal.”

Kharla seemed relieved at the delay. She nibbled at her food with less enthusiasm than before. After finishing her cup of tea, she excused herself to get some more.

Dr. Robinson turned to Teyla, “Teyla, I was hoping that you would assist me with Kharla. According to Dr. Beckett, Colonel Sheppard mentioned that she has been through a lot and someone should talk to her. Mr. Woolsey asked me to interview her. I thought that your presence might be reassuring for Kharla and you could help me with any Pegasus aspects that I might be unfamiliar with. You could also lead the discussion of options for her future.”

Focused on the idea that John had expressed such concern for Kharla’s emotional wellbeing, Teyla took a moment to register the question. Surely, he would not feel that way if she had harmed him. Would he?

“I would be happy to help,” she finally said, “I will join you in your office after I leave Torren with Dr. Kusanagi. The two of them really enjoy each other’s company. I think she is teaching him some of her language. What is it called?”

“It’s Japanese. Everybody loves spending time with Torren. I certainly do,” Dr. Robinson smiled. “Thank you, Teyla for agreeing to help with Kharla. I know that this is a difficult time for you, so if at any point you need to take a break, please don’t hesitate. I would also be happy to talk to you privately about any concerns or questions you might have. Call me or drop by, we’ll find the time.”

“Thank you. I think I will come to speak to you soon,” Teyla said.

Soon after that, Torren, Dusty and Kharla returned to the table carrying assorted foods and drinks. They finished the meal at a leisurely pace. Dr. Robinson managed to put Kharla at ease with neutral questions and comments. Dusty joked with Torren, making him giggle and somehow also finish his food in a fairly expeditious and not too messy manner. Focused on her concerns, Teyla remained only distantly connected to the ongoing conversations. No one seemed to mind.


	20. Chapter 20

Teyla was not at all surprised that Woolsey asked Robinson to interview Kharla. Even without John’s warning, their commander most likely would have foreseen that a direct interview with the young woman would only serve to make both of them extremely uncomfortable with little, if any, information gained. From her own primarily social interactions with Robinson, Teyla could easily attest that Atlantis’ newest psychologist was an excellent choice to take the lead in such a delicate conversation. In a bittersweet way, Robinson made her imagine the type of self-assured, confident older woman that Kate Heightmeyer might have grown to become if she had not died too soon.

Kharla’s interview started innocuously enough with her recounting how she ended up in Khamala Prime. While it pained her, Teyla was not surprised to hear that the two of them shared a childhood experience that was far too common in Pegasus. Wraith culling had orphaned both of them at a young age. But that was where their lives diverged. She had been fortunate that Charin lovingly took care her as if she had been her own granddaughter. Kharla had no one. A few days after the culling, a band of unscrupulous traders found her in her otherwise deserted village. They took her in under false promises and eventually sold her as a bond servant to a healer who treated her decently but, even though Kharla did not say it, indubitably without affection.

Teyla had learned about the very distasteful practice of bonded servitude through tales she had heard during her travels through the Stargates. She had never before met a person who had to live it. She felt great sympathy for Kharla’s misfortune. It must have been very difficult for her to grow up without anyone around who considered her anything more than a laborer.

“After Lagona died, her daughter sold my bond to Vernara Alkamade,” Kharla continued her story in an emotionless tone. Her gaze centered on one of the windows, which provided a breath-taking view of the Atlantis skyline and the icy waters surrounding it. “My duties were to take care of the injured and sick, do any chores that the cook required of me, and tend to Vernara’s wishes. It was a very strange and secretive household. I did not know much of what was going on beyond the kitchen and sick room.”

Kharla rubbed her forearms as she spoke. Teyla noticed the faded signs of old bruises, cuts and strange circular scars. With dismay, she realized that someone had intentionally cut and burned her.

Kharla fell silent. She appeared to have lost the momentum to continue.

“Would you tell us about when you first met Colonel Sheppard?” Robinson prompted her.

“I was ordered to tend to his injured arm. I cleaned it, stitched it closed and bandaged it. He was unconscious at the time,” Kharla finally raised her eyes to look at Teyla. “No one told me who he was or what the mistress intended to do with him. Later I found out that he had been captured to be a bed companion. I had heard rumors, but I thought it was just foolish talk, until … until recently.”

When Teyla heard the euphemism ‘bed companion,’ her previously quelled fury at what had been done to John churned awake. To regain control of her emotions, she stood up and walked to the small table that held a pitcher and several glasses. Willing her hand not to shake, she poured some water into a glass. She remained facing the wall because she did not want the others to see her face while she tried to collect herself.

At that moment, she felt an unexpected longing for Rodney’s company. The predictable way he would have reacted to that phrase—she could easily imagine him outraged, angrily sputtering strange Earth sayings—would have forced her to manage her own feelings to countermand his outbursts. It was easy for her to play the reasonable person against Rodney’s temperamental effusions of words. In his absence there was no one to equilibrate her, currently leaving her emotional pendulum heavily skewed towards the urge to scream and rant. Of course, she could not allow herself to do that.

She bit back the impulse to say that John was absolutely no one’s willing bed companion, except her very own. She drowned her protest at the use of that term with another gulp of water. She reminded herself that Kharla was just repeating what she had heard. By the look in the young woman’s face as she spoke, it was clear that she was embarrassed or worse—maybe, even ashamed—for using those words and having been there.

“Kharla, we are not accusing you of anything. We know that you are not responsible for what happened to Colonel Sheppard. You also helped him escape. We are all very grateful for that,” Robinson said. “Right now we just need to collect general facts to help Mr. Woolsey decide on a course of action. We are not asking you to share personal details that will make you too uncomfortable.”

No longer fixed on the window, Kharla directed her continuing account to Robinson who sat across the desk. “The next day, I was told to go to Sheppard’s cell and re-dress his wounds. The guards locked me in there with him. They made it sound as if he might hurt me. They said that they would not do anything to stop him if he did. He was kind to me; he only asked me a few questions. The guards were listening so I could tell him useless things like the name of the planet and the time of day. There was nothing else I could do for him.”

She paused again. Teyla had questions she wanted to ask, to learn specific details about John’s captivity, but she did not feel prepared to hear the answers. She focused on the reassuring thought that John had been kind to Kharla. Naturally that would have been his reaction to her. Kindness to vulnerable strangers who were in a bad situation inevitably triggered John’s engrained compassion, even when he was worse off than they were. Most likely at first sight, he had labeled Kharla as a stray deserving help.

Unlike herself, Robinson had no inhibitions against asking difficult questions, “Kharla, do you know if Colonel Sheppard had already been brought to Vernara’s attention?”

Kharla’s voice became very soft when she answered, “I … I heard the guards joke about how they left him secured to her … bed that morning and brought him back to his cell before the midday meal.”

At these words, Teyla realized that her conviction that she would be emotionally prepared to handle hearing what had happened to John had been far too optimistic. She knew that John had been tied up; Carson had described the injuries to his wrists and ankles; she had seen the bandages on his body; and she had already imagined how he had obtained those injuries. But to hear confirmation that guards (most likely the ones who had abused him) had brought him to that woman’s room and bound him to her bed made her conjure up images that were too graphically disturbing. She put the glass down, afraid that she would break it.

She could not make herself return to her chair. The air in Dr. Robinson’s office suddenly felt stifling. At times like these, she begrudged the Ancients for furnishing the city with windows that did not open to allow in fresh air—however sensible this design was in terms of security and space travel requirements (Rodney’s influence clear in those furtive rational thoughts). She yearned to breathe in the salty winds (a constant in this world), letting them clear away the bitter taste that she could not wash down from the back of her throat.

As a compromise to help assuage her roiling emotions, she moved to the nearest window and looked at the vast sweep of ocean. White foamy streaks in the deep blue background were the only indication that the waters were much more turbulent than the y looked at this height.

She remembered the many times in the past few weeks that she and John had taken breaks from work by escaping outside to one of the lower terraces. She missed the feel of his strong body when she leaned against him, his arms embracing her and contributing a special kind of heat to the warmth already provided by their winter parkas. They would stand in companionable silence, both mesmerized by the rolling waves. Breathing in the invigorating cold air and letting the sounds of the ocean momentarily relieve their worry for Rodney.

“Teyla, I am so sorry,” Robinson’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I didn’t think about how difficult this would be for you. You really don’t have to stay here. Kharla and I can continue this conversation on our own. We can talk about options for settling Kharla at a later time.”

“I am fine,” Teyla produced a neutral expression before turning to face her. Robinson looked at her in a knowing way, clearly not convinced by her statement.

Teyla smiled at the incongruous thought that John would be laughing at her for being caught lying about her state of being. “I will go soon because it is time for me to see John. But first, Kharla please tell us how you two escaped.”

For a moment, Kharla looked like she was contemplating fleeing the room. Teyla easily recognized that desire since she had been tempted to do the same thing just a few moments before.

The young woman took a deep breath and said, “Later that day, Vernara made me … do things that I would never willfully do. She ordered me to attend to her in her study. There she made me inhale a strangely scented smoke and she spoke at length with words I cannot remember. When I described it to Colonel Shepard during our escape, he guessed that it was probably something called hypsis … hyponsis…”

“Do you mean hypnosis?” said Robinson.

“Yes, I believe that is what he called it. He thought the healers here would know for sure. The next thing I remember is that I was in Vernara’s chamber. The colonel was restrained by ropes. He had been there a while. His back was bleeding because she had flogged him. Vernara told me to clean his wounds. So I did. After that I stood aside while she did … things to him … I am so sorry, there was nothing I could do to stop her.”

At the sounds of sobbing, Teyla turned her head away from the window to look at Kharla. Multiple tissues clutched in both hands, she was dabbing away at her freely flowing tears. Teyla did not know if they should continue with this interview—it felt like she and Robinson were subjecting Kharla to another form of torture. In the long-term it was best not to keep these things within oneself, but the process was very traumatic and maybe it was too soon for her. Still though, they needed to know what happened to determine if any kind of threat remained. Today they just needed a little more information from Kharla; the rest could wait for a later time.

Teyla covered the few steps separating them and crouched down next to her chair, “Kharla please remember that you are not responsible for what this Alkamade woman did to Colonel Sheppard. You were both at her mercy and clearly she had none. This was not your fault, do you understand?”

Kharla nodded her head and blew her nose. After gently patting her shoulder, Teyla went to stand, this time with her back against the window, no longer looking outward. If she was asking Kharla to be strong, then she too would be. She steeled herself to listen to the rest of the account. She decided that the best approach was to hear to the words and remember them without deeply processing their meaning. That would come later, in private.

Robinson got up and poured a glass of water. She brought it over to Kharla, “What Teyla said is true. Just take your time. I know it’s hard to believe it, but talking about the awful things that happened to you will help you move on.”

Kharla took a few sips and continued with a voice even fainter than before, “Vernara gave me her knife and commanded me to make cuts into the unmarked parts of his back. The night before she had sliced his arm in a certain pattern; she wanted me to cut him in the same way on his back. Please believe me, I could not stop my hands—they obeyed her. I truly could not stop them. I really tried. I promise you.”

Kharla resumed crying. Robinson offered her more tissues from the box on her desk. These were a precious commodity that the expedition had brought from Earth. Along with large quantities of toilet paper, another paper product that Earth people cherished even more.

She sniffled. “I am so sorry, I hurt him. I did not want to. I had no control over my own limbs, Please believe me.”

Robinson stood up and walked around her desk. She gently rubbed Kharla’s back while she continued to cry.

“Kharla, we believe you. This wasn’t your fault. Dr. Keller detected traces of hallucinogenic and psychotic substances in your blood. We don’t exactly know how yet, but those chemicals along with hypnosis could be used to control a person’s behavior. This is beyond our own experience, but from what I have been told, very strange things do happen in this part of the universe.” Robinson sat down on the chair that Teyla had left vacant. She held Kharla’s hand, wordlessly encouraging her to continue.

Kharla obliged. “When she was done, Vernara ordered me to stop cutting him. While I tended his wounds, he whispered to me that I should help him escape by giving him the knife. He said that he would help me too. I could hear his words, but I could not make my body do it. At least not until later.”

Teyla’s mind had gotten stuck at the first sentence. _Done with what?_ Just before she began to voice the question, she realized the answer. She felt ill to the pit of her stomach at the very thought of such an act. This must have been the source of John’s cry in his delirium-induced nightmare. Distracted by her thoughts, she did not notice the gaps in the rest of Kharla’s narration.

“I finally got the knife and managed to free one of his hands. The colonel took the knife from me. He reacted incredibly quickly. He cut himself free and killed her. One of the guards must have heard the noise. He knocked on the door to check on things. As soon as he came in, Sheppard killed him too. He had to kill a second guard and knock out one more before we escaped the compound. It was still night when we made it to the ring. The colonel overpowered the lone watchman and we made it through.”

Teyla had not doubt that Kharla had left much unsaid. Most likely painful, messy details that she did not want to share. Teyla did not have the stomach to press her. Her account confirmed that John had killed his primary torturer and at least two of her guards. All of them deserved it.

“Thank you, Kharla for sharing these horrific memories with us,” Teyla said. “I must go now. When you are ready, I know of many good places and people that you could settle with if you wished to.”

Teyla took a few steps towards the door. She stopped and crouched down next to Kharla, brushing her arm to get her attention. “Vernara clearly used you in terrible ways. Please do not feel guilty for all the things that you could not control. I am sure that would be the first thing Colonel Sheppard would say to you.”

“He already did,” she said. Her tone clearly indicating that neither of them had convinced her.

Teyla left them, knowing that Robinson would try to begin the arduous task of helping Kharla reassemble herself. She did not envy her duty.


	21. Chapter 21

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Jennifer left the infirmary and took a detour to the mess hall to get coffee. She was very grateful that despite the brief time they had to prepare before their hasty departure from Earth, the Atlantis military and nonmilitary factions had cooperated to stash a huge, assorted supply of coffee beans and pre-ground blends. The brew of the day depended on the whims of the kitchen staff member assigned to the chore. On several occasions, she had witnessed the comically pathetic spectacle of Rodney unsuccessfully try to cajole said persons to make coffee to his specifications. While he had grown to be so sweet to her, he still remained clueless in the art of charming anyone else. She hoped that he was somehow managing not to completely piss off his Wraith handlers.

The hall was sparsely populated, not a surprise given the early morning hours. The unmistakable scent of freshly baked goods reminded her that she was starving. Understanding the scope of what had happened to John during his captivity had made her lose her appetite for dinner the evening before. Now her stomach protested loudly, emotional turmoil could only subdue it for so long before the physiological needs took over.

After filling her mug, she snatched a couple of muffins and retreated back to her office. She desperately needed a caffeine and sugar jolt. The previous night she had only managed a few broken hours of sleep. First in Teyla’s quarters, where she fell asleep on the couch while she stayed with Torren for two hours before Amelia came to relieve her. And then in her quarters where, despite the luxury of being in her own bed, she struggled to fall back asleep. It had felt as if she had just closed her eyes when Carson called her back to the infirmary to help with John’s unexpected and alarming temperature spike.

Her thoughts inexorably drifted to the detailed map of torture and sexual abuse they had uncovered the day before during the cleaning and surgical debridement of his wounds. She rubbed her eyes trying to obliterate the images that seemed to have been permanently seared on her retinas. The multiple whip marks, knife cuts, bites and bruises had been bad enough; the contusions, scrapes and small tears in intimate places were too much. She still felt embarrassed by how befuddled she acted when she first recognized the causes of some of John’s injuries.

Doogie Howser jokes aside, she had amassed the equivalent of decades of experience in her nearly three years here in Atlantis, two years at Stargate Command on Earth, six years of fellowship and surgical residency at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor (including a couple of month-long overseas stints with Doctors Without Borders), and four years of medical school at the University of Chicago. She had seen much more gruesome injuries, including plenty that were the result of people intentionally harming or even torturing others. And while admittedly there hadn’t been many, she definitely had treated victims of brutal rapes. Until now, she felt confident that these experiences had prepared her to unflinchingly face anything her patients might have suffered.

She never expected to see one of their own be subjected to this type of assault. In Atlantis their primary worries had been to fight off the Wraith, the Replicators and the Genii—the latter two had been taken care of (one destroyed, the other transformed into an ally of sorts), the former remained their formidable foe. None of these enemies had ever used sexual rape as a weapon (admittedly, mental rape seemed par for the course for the Replicators and the Wraith). Uncovering the evidence of how the military commander of Atlantis, a six foot tall, hardened soldier and friend, had been victimized in such a way (and she was fully cognizant of how John would object to that “v” word) had truly shocked her.

Carson had been very patient and understanding. He gave her a few moments of silence to recover, while he continued with the work that had to be done. As she took deep breaths to calm herself, she noticed the sorrow and understanding in the hooded eyes that peaked over the surgical mask he wore. Maybe being Michael’s prisoner for two years, forced to do and witness atrocious things, had immunized him against reacting to the evidence of anyone’s cruelty against those they considered beneath them. Or, more likely, he had learned a much finer command of his poker face.

Despite the wide scope of the damage they uncovered, most of it seemed superficial, so they thought they had things nicely under control. Thanks to their judicious combination of state-of-the-art Earth skin-grafting expertise and Ancient cloning and wound repair techniques, they were expecting to do the skin grafts today. If things had proceeded according to their plan, John would soon have been nicely on his way to a speedy healing process—at least for the physical aspect of his injuries. In retrospect, they had been prematurely confident that they had managed to deal with all the infected sites early enough to prevent such complications.

The pain-staking surgical debridement they performed, along with the administration of intravenous broad spectrum antibiotics should have stopped any incipient infection. “Should have” being the operative phrase. Luck mocked them as usual. Some of the microorganisms that John’s abusers had inadvertently infected him with, probably by digging their fingers into his wounds (plenty of evidence indicated that had happened), turned out to be deviously immune to the drugs that should have very efficiently killed them off.

By the time she arrived in the infirmary in the middle of the night, Carson, Marie and Fernando, the new Spanish nurse, had managed to bring down John’s temperature below forty degrees Celsius—still quite high, but not as life-threatening as it had been. Visual re-inspection of every wound site revealed puss oozing from three lacerations in his upper back and signs of tissue necrosis. Full-body imaging with the powerful Ancient medical scanner found an abscess deep within the arrow wound in his arm. Despite the danger of having to operate on someone who was so sick, they wheeled John back to surgery. They had no other option. 

They removed the infected tissue and drained the abscess. John pulled through the procedure without going into seizures or cardiac arrest—that was quite an achievement. They were now keeping him stable with mechanical ventilation, intravenous fluids and a drug cocktail to control his otherwise plummeting vital signs. His temperature was still uncomfortably high. If things didn’t improve soon, they might have to hook him up to a dialysis machine. The bitter irony that after successfully escaping his torturer, John might succumb to an insidious organism, too small to be seen without a powerful microscope, was too much. They could not let that happened.

Jennifer examined the results from John’s latest blood test. The CBC differentials, chemistry panels and truly wacky electrolyte balances were indicative of many things, including an escalating septic infection—not good news but not a surprise either. These results confirmed their diagnosis. The high-through-put polymerase chain reaction analyses of the blood and tissue samples, and the antimicrobial resistance assays would not be completed for another hour. They needed those results to pinpoint the identity of the infectious organism and to precisely determine which anti-microbial agents to use to combat the infection. In the meantime, the much needed skin grafts were on hold.

She drank the last dregs of coffee to shake off the sleepy tendrils that were enveloping her brain. No time for a nap, she needed to finish this analysis. The laboratory finding that really puzzled her were traces of unusual chemicals circulating in John’s system. One had a familiar structure.

It took her longer to type in the query than for the computer to regurgitate the answer. Discounting a couple of ingenious modifications, this drug was almost identical to the prescription medication sildenafil citrate. The compound floating around in John’s blood was essentially a much more potent and faster-acting form Viagra. According to calculations based on the drug’s half-life, Jennifer estimated that John had received a heavy dose within the past thirty hours. One more clue to how he had been forced to “perform” against his will. She quickly filed that revelation away in the don’t-go-there-right-now part of her brain.

She wondered if the residual levels of this drug were contributing to his continued dangerously low blood pressure or if that was solely due to the infection. She resolved to discuss it with Carson. Whichever the cause, the medications they were currently giving him appeared to have stabilized his crashing vital signs—hopefully they would begin to normalize as they brought the fever under control.

“Hey, how’s Sheppard?”

The unexpected voice made her jump in her chair, “Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry, I thought you saw me,” Ronon leaned against the open doorway with an expression flickering between amusement and remorse.

“I didn’t. I was checking on the Colonel’s lab results,” she said.

“Beckett let me look at him for only a minute before he kicked me out,” Ronon stepped into the office. He turned one of the two chairs facing her desk and sat astride it, his arms folded on top of the backrest. All traces of humor disappeared from his face. “Is Sheppard going to be okay?”

Jennifer noticed the telltale marks of fatigue around his eyes. Like many others in Atlantis, he hadn’t had much sleep lately—too much crap going on.  

“The infection is definitely in his blood stream and that along with a drug his captors gave him are messing up his system. I’m still waiting for the …”

“Yeah, Beckett told me about that. I know you’ll fix him. I meant about the other stuff Alkamade did to him.”

 _That was the big elephant or, better yet, one of Rodney’s gargantuan whale friends in the room_ , Jennifer thought. Leave it to Ronon to ask the question that they were all too prudish to ponder aloud. How does sexual torture affect a person like John? A man who has already been through all kinds of hell, just not this particular type.

Prior history suggested that he would try to brush this off with one of his famous “I’m fine” understatements. She hoped that this would not be the case this time because the inner turmoil that would remain dangerously hidden below the controlled surface veneer might be too much for even cool-hand John to handle. Carson had described to her a more truthful and shaken John than either of them had ever seen before. Maybe that was a good sign.

“Without going into specifics, I can tell you that physically there is no permanent damage. Once we beat down infection, he will recover, uhm, all his functions quickly.” She paused, trying to find some other helpful or at least informative nugget to share. There was nothing. “Honestly, Ronon, I don’t really know how John will deal with what happened to him. Your guess would probably be better than mine, given that you have known him longer and in many ways you two are so alike. What do you think?”

“Uh?” Ronon looked honestly confused.

Maybe if she hadn’t been so tired, she would have beaten around the bush a little longer before asking the question she really wanted answered. “Come on Ronon, you know what I mean. You are both the manly, silent-warrior type. How would you feel if this had happened to you?”

As part of her medical training, Jennifer had learned the basics principles about the care and psychology of rape victims. Almost all the literature she had read on the subject dealt with victimized adult women and children of either sex. She remembered reading some passing references to men raped by other men, but nothing about men sexually assaulted by women.

In a highly unscientific way, she wanted Ronon to help shed some light on how a man might react to this type of abuse. He was one of the few men she felt comfortable enough asking such a question—she imagined that Carson would be someone who would also provide a thoughtful answer, unlike Rodney (but watching Rodney squirm around some sort of sarcastic answer would be very entertaining—well, at least, she still had a sense of humor).

Ronon remained immersed in thought for a few minutes. She imagined him rummaging through all his awful experiences to find a possible parallel that would help put himself in John’s shoes. Hopefully, she hadn’t offended him with this question. She knew that he had been through a lot in his seven years as a runner and she was almost sure that this was one type of experience that he had not had to suffer through. But it’s not as if this topic had come up in their prior conversations.

He surprised her with his eloquence, “I think that I would be angry at the people who did this and at myself for letting it happen.”

“But it’s not your … I mean his fault. Even without knowing the full story, you can be sure that he fought all the way. The rope burns and …”

“I know that it wasn’t his fault,” Ronon interrupted her in a gruff tone. “You asked me how I would feel.”

“Yes, I did. Sorry,” she said.

She thought that Ronon was done talking. The conversation had already lasted longer than usual. But he continued, “Killing her like Sheppard did would feel right. But, I don’t know if it’s enough.”

She waited a little, hoping that he would elaborate more, before she broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Well, we are just going to have to play it by ear and be there for him,” she tried not to cringe at her own trite words of wisdom. “One thing for sure is that he will have to talk to Dr. Robinson, quite a bit I imagine. He is not going to get out of that one. And now he has Teyla too. She is not going to let him shut himself down.”

That comment made Ronon’s face brighten up a little, “Yeah, you are right about that.” Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, his smile vanished.

Jennifer examined him carefully. For some reason she could not fathom, he had a guilty look about him. “Are you okay?”

Ronon rubbed his bearded chin. “I should have had his six.”

“Ronon, there was no way any of you could have predicted that this was going to happen,” Jennifer said.

“We lost him just like when Kolya snatched him. He got grabbed behind our backs—watching our backs while no one had his. That time he ended up being fed to a Wraith and this time to that Alkamade bitch.”

Normally, Jennifer would have objected to the use of that derogatory term against a woman, but in this situation she could not think of a better word to use. Ronon’s mastery of English colloquialisms never failed to impress her. Team movie nights and hanging out with the Marines were really paying off.

As part of her briefings to join the Atlantis expedition, she had read all the reports about John being fed to the Wraith and had watched the stomach-churning video recordings (not by choice, it was part of the obligatory briefing). Sometimes she still wondered why she had stuck to her decision to go to Atlantis after seeing what the Wraith did for their meals. Other times, she knew that witnessing such acts cemented her resolve to help humans in Pegasus overcome these beings who treated them like food.

She was suddenly struck by the commonality between John’s past experience with the Wraith and what he had just gone through. In a way, they were both forms of rape.

“Ronon, how did the Colonel react to what happened to him at the hands of Kolya and the Wraith? Do you remember how he seemed to you afterwards?”

“I dunno … He was just Sheppard. He didn’t talk about it. Maybe he was a little quieter for a couple of days. He snapped a few times at Rodney, when he kept on whining that he looked younger than before,” Ronon stopped, realizing what he had just said. “Oh, sorry.”

People tended to react that way around her. As if the very mention of Rodney would somehow hurt her more than she already was. It had really annoyed her for the first few weeks, but now she was used to it. She recognized that these were honest, but misguided, attempts to spare her feelings. In reality, she liked to hear people talk about Rodney, even if they were making fun of something he had done; all remembrances made her feel that he was still here and a part of her life. Not just a ghost.

“It’s okay Ronon. I can easily imagine Rodney thoughtlessly blurting out all sorts of insensitive stuff.”

“Yeah. I … I said some stupid stuff too to Sheppard. I was mad at him for letting the Wraith go free,” he said. “I didn’t understand his hyper sense of honor. I get it now, even if I don’t always agree with it.”

“I think that there is an epidemic of honor and duty floating around here,” she said.

While she thought about the best approach to lead the conversation back to what they could do to help John, her computer beeped. She clicked on an icon and quickly scanned the reams of data displayed on the screen.

“Sorry Ronon, I have to go. I just got John’s test results.” They both stood up at the same time. She could see the unspoken question in Ronon’s face. “This is good. We now have the information we need to select the best way to fight off the infection.”

For some strange reason, as she rushed out of her office she thought about how her high school girlfriends would have called her insane for having picked as the love of her life geeky, endearingly balding Rodney over studly, exotic Ronon. She had no regrets about this particular choice. She was very happy that Ronon and Amelia were together. And she had no doubt that she picked the right man for herself. That’s why she missed him so much. Was she being selfish for needing John to return to fighting form STAT not just for his own sake but also to get Rodney back? Oh, heck, right now she had no more time to waste thinking about stuff like that.


	22. Chapter 22

Once the full-blown septic infection hit John like a well-placed C-4 explosion, all that his senses registered were uncomfortable sensations—heat, chills, pain, tremors and shivers—and voices too distant to be discernible. After some time, he felt nothing at all.

He came awake slowly. Part of him wanted to drift back to sleep, the other part needed to know what the hell was going on. Which side won was no contest. Out of habit, he kept his body still to acquire as much Intel as possible before giving any signs of consciousness. Because his eye lids were far too heavy to lift, he relied on other senses for the initial reconnaissance. The feel of the bed and bedding, the smell of antiseptics and the distinct sounds from medical equipment told him that he was in the Atlantis infirmary. Not a huge surprise—if he could only remember why.

His head resting on a pillow, he found himself lying on his left side with cushions tucked between his legs. Shaped foam supports were wedged against his body, presumably to prevent him from easily rolling onto his back or stomach. Everything felt stiff and achy. While overall, he wasn’t in much pain, there were some throbbing hotspots on his upper back and right arm, which was nestled by a sling. As he registered those injuries, the stupefying murkiness enveloping his memory banks vaporized.

Images from the worst moments in Khamala Prime flashed in his mind. Mentally recoiling, he shoved those memories to the furthest reaches in his head. The time to think about that stuff would be later; hopefully much later and in private, very private. The important thing was that he and Kharla had successfully reached Atlantis; best of all, he had seen and briefly talked to Teyla. Her caresses were imprinted on his arm.

 _Now, it was time to get this show on the road_ , he decided. His eyes were so crusty that he had to pry them open. A blurry, brown-clad figure slouched on the chair next to his bed.

“Hey, Sheppard, it’s about time you woke up.” As soon as the blur spoke, John recognized him and, after a few blinks, his features became distinct.

“Hi Ronon,” his voice sounded very hoarse. He tried to swallow to clear it up, but his mouth felt as dry as one of those forsaken deserts in Afghanistan.

“Hold on buddy. Here’s some water. Drink slowly and don’t move or Beckett will kill me.” Ronon held a cup low enough for John to effortlessly reach the proffered long, bent straw.

The liquid soothed his throat. He took his time sipping, not just because of the awkward position or the knowledge that he might get sick if he drank too quickly after being unconscious for a yet to be determined length of time, but also because he didn’t know what to say.

“How long have I been out?” he asked, deciding to stick to the safety of fact gathering.

Ronon placed the cup down on the stand next to the bed. He scooted the chair closer and sat, obviously so that John wouldn’t have to crane his neck to see him. Even without the right angle to get a full three-sixty degrees view, John realized that this was one of the few private rooms. Good.

“Almost four days. You were really sick for the first couple. Teyla was worried,” Ronon said with a grin.

Despite the backhanded phrasing, it was clear that Ronon had been worried too. Things must have been bad. John remembered feeling feverish and being in a lot of pain before Carson knocked him out with the magic drugs. While he had felt like crap, it hadn’t occurred to him that his injuries were life-threatening. Definitely disconcerting, but at the moment, he didn’t want to waste time talking about his latest medical drama with Ronon. That could wait for the inevitable chat with the docs.

“Where’s Teyla?” he said.

“She went to lunch with Torren. She sat with you all morning but you took your own sweet time coming out of sedation.” Ronon raised his hand toward the com plugged in his ear. “I should call Beckett.”

“Wait a sec,” said John. “Please tell me what’s going on in the search for McKay. Once the Doc starts, it will be forever before I’ll get another chance at a sit rep.”

“Lorne has teams following several leads. Woolsey is communication with Landon and other contacts in the Coalition. No luck yet. Now that you’re better, I’ll go off world too.” Ronon looked down at his hands before raising his eyes to again meet his. “Sheppard, I’m so sorry that we failed to find you. When they took you, those bastards set the market on fire and by the time we got out of that mess you were gone. Zelenka pulled all the addresses from the gate and we searched …” 

Having already heard it from Teyla, John had been expecting this guilt-ridden line of thought to make its reappearance. “Ronon, stop. You didn’t fail me. There were too many gates and too many planets. The odds of finding me quickly were unbelievably small. You, Teyla and the others did what you could and I did too. It’s fine. We’re good.”

“Right,” Ronon paused before adding, “I am glad you killed the Alkamade woman and her two guards.”

“Me too,” suddenly very weary, John closed his eyes. He did not want to think about how he escaped.

“I’ll call the Doc,” Ronon flicked on the button on his com and relayed the news. When finished, he lightly tapped John’s shoulder. “Come on, Sheppard, stay awake.”

John jerked at the unexpected touch. A burst of pain flared up in his arm and back, wiping out any hint of drowsiness he had felt a moment ago. He opened his eyes and he said, “I’m not sleeping.”

“Sorry about that,” said Ronon. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay. Just a little jumpy,” embarrassed at his overreaction, John changed the subject. “Do you know if Kharla, the young woman who escaped with me, is okay?”

“She only had some bruises and minor stuff. Keller kept her in the infirmary one night. Dusty took her under her wing. She’s also been talking with Robinson and Teyla. She shies away from me. I don’t know why.”

Avoiding thinking about what Kharla and Teyla might have discussed, John eyed Ronon. He easily figured out what about him might be frightening to Kharla. “Don’t take it personally, my friend. It’s just that physically you remind her of some very nasty people.”

“All right, I’ll stay away from her.” Ronon sounded disappointed.

“I’ll talk to her when I get sprung from here. Or, better yet, I’ll get Teyla to do it,” John said.

“Thanks.”

John could tell that his head was not yet working up to par. It had taken him this long to realize that Ronon had mentioned a fire at the market. John wondered how many people had gotten hurt or killed. Fire was one of the few ways of dying that truly terrified him. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t even the slightest singe mark on Ronon and Woolsey had looked perfectly fine in the gate room. While his memories from after the surgery were a little fuzzy, he was also fairly certain that Teyla hadn’t looked burned or otherwise injured either. But what about Sergeant Comsky, the Coalition folks that they were supposed to guard and the other people at the market? 

“Did anyone get hurt in the fire?”

“None of us did, not even that stuck-up Chancellor. A few locals had minor injuries. We got the fires under control pretty fast,” Ronon hesitated for a moment before continuing, “just not fast enough to get to you.”

If he could, John would have kicked himself for bringing up that topic again. Too late, Ronon’s mood instantly became more subdued. They exchanged a few more words, but John wasn’t into chatting anymore either. He felt too awake to be lying in bed propped like an invalid, naked except for a flimsy hospital gown and blanket, and very aware of the Foley catheter stuck in a certain part of his anatomy. He always detested that intrusion, but his hate for the device had ratcheted up exponentially. Go figure.

A few minutes later, Carson came in. To John’s relief he didn’t have a nurse tagging along to assist him. He suspected that Carson had done it on purpose, rightly anticipating that they would have to discuss some sensitive personal matters.

“Good to see that the anesthetics have finally worn off, Colonel. How are you feeling?” Carson placed his tablet on top of the closest cabinet occupying the wall most visible from John’s skewed position.

“I’m just dandy, Doc. I guess there was a bit more than a wee mess on my back, right?” John was pretty happy with the level of sarcasm poured into his voice. Childish yes, but it made him feel closer to his normal self.

Carson checked the readings on the monitors, “Aye, you developed a bloody high fever and other symptoms of a septic infection. You had us quite worried for a while.”

Ronon stood up and walked to the doorway, “I’ll tell Teyla that you woke up. See you later.”

“Thanks, Ronon,” John said, wishing that he could leave too.

“How’s the pain level?” Carson checked the contents of the IV bag hanging off the stand and fiddled with the controls of the infusion pump.

“The pain is fine, but would you please get rid of the catheter?”

“Look son, ye just woke up after being very ill for four days. You aren’t ready yet …” Carson stopped, as if he had just remembered something. He took a long look at him.

John blushed under the scrutiny. “Carson, I really need to have it off,” he said. He hated pleading like this, without providing a more or less reasonable rationale for his request or, better yet, a joke to sound less pathetic. He hoped that he would not have to confess that the intrusion made him uncomfortable in ways that went beyond the physical.

As if a light bulb had gone off in his head, Carson’s expression changed from annoyed to understanding. John let out a breath that he had not even realized he was holding, relieved from having to explain the whirl of confusing emotions he was struggling to stamp out.

“Fine but I’ve to examine you first to make sure you’re ready to move around. I’m going to start with the ankles.”

“Okay Doc,” said John, promising to himself to be the most cooperative of patients.

Carson pulled up the blanket and gently touched the right ankle. Despite the warning and the doctor’s methodical touch, John reflexively pulled away.

“Sorry about that,” he said, forcing his limb to relax in Carson’s light grasp.

“It’s okay son. I am just going to replace the hydrogel dressing. You might feel a slight tug, but it shouldn’t hurt,” Carson said.

John barely felt anything. “You’re right, no pain. How does it look?”

“It’s healing nicely. In a couple more days you’ll be able to wear boots again. The ropes dug deep, but luckily they missed the ligaments and tendons.” 

After that, Carson carefully explained what he was going to do before touching him. John welcomed the heads-up. Without much effort, he kept himself still and relaxed while Carson changed the dressing on the other ankle and both wrists. He even felt comfortable enough to look at what Carson was doing to his wrists. Even without the doctor’s tour-guide style narration, he would have noticed that the right wrist had suffered significantly more damage from the ropes than the other one. The cause of that was a no brainer to John but he did not offer elaborate—anyway, Carson knew better than to ask. John zoned out for a second while he stopped himself from shuddering at the intruding memories of his struggles with the bindings.

“The surgical bandages on your arm need to stay in place for another day. Now, I’ll take a quick look at your back but I won’t change the dressing. I’ll need Marie to assist me with that and we’ll do it later,” said Carson.

“Sounds good,” John continued in his cooperative patient mode.

Despite the warning, John tensed up when Carson moved to stand behind him. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ He was increasingly aggravated at himself for acting like such a nervous Nellie. Glad that at least Carson couldn’t see his face, he closed his eyes to calm down. This had to be a normal response to having been held captive and treated harshly—he certainly had plenty of experience in that arena. This jitteriness would wear off soon, he reassured himself.

Carson launched into a detailed explanation of the extent of damage to various parts of his back and what they had done to fix it. The soothing familiar cadence in his voice contrasted sharply with the rather alarming information. 

“Bad enough for skin grafts?” John said dully.

“Aye, your back was a bloody disaster when you arrived. And then some of the lacerations became infected with a particularly virulent, antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria which we had never seen before. It must have come from Khamala Prime,” the tone in his voice and look on his face broadcast Carson’s deep antipathy towards that planet. “The infection spread to your blood stream, compromising your vital function. You were on life support until yesterday. By the time we completed a second round of surgical debridement, the area that we had to cover with skin grafts doubled in size. Without these grafts the scarring would have permanently impeded your range of motion. I’ll show you pictures on my tablet, if you’re interested.”

“No thanks. I’ll skip the slide show for now,” John used this tiny dose of humor to anchor himself from being swept away by the realization that, on top of the torture Vernara had put him through, she had almost killed him or ended his career, whichever came first. Sometimes he didn’t know what he feared the most, death or a medical discharge that would send him on a one-way trip back to Earth.

Carson ran the hand-held medical scanner a hand-span above his body. Satisfied with the readings, he pulled up the chair that Ronon previously vacated. He placed himself close to eye level with John.

With apprehension, John realized what logically should come next during the course of this medical exam. So far, Carson had not ventured to check on anything between his hips and knees. Crap.

Carson pointed to the scanner, “Don’t worry, thanks to this, there is no need for an internal exam.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said John.

Stupidly, he hadn’t even thought about that being on the agenda. He had been anticipating just a very embarrassing external exam. Thanks to the Ancients, he had really dodged a bullet. Given his current predicament, he moved the medical scanner to nearly the same high level as the jumpers in his list of redeeming things the Ancients had left behind as part of their bedraggled legacy. However, the Wraith and the Replicators weighed heavily on the condemn side of the list, permanently skewing the balance against them, in his opinion.

“The few tears and the many abrasions you’ve down there are healing fine. Now, I’ll take care of the catheter and then I’ll help you sit up. After that I’ll answer your questions, even the ones ye won’t ask.”

Without further ado, Carson removed the despised tubing and helped him gingerly shift his body without putting undue pressure on his abused arm and back. Lucky for John, Carson got too busy fixing the pillows and raising the head of the bed to notice his discomfort as he settled his body into a somewhat comfortable sitting position. The pain was only momentary and the reward was well worth it.

“Hold off leaning onto your back for a moment, son. This memory foam cushion will keep the pressure off the skin-graft sites,” Carson said as he placed said object behind John’s back. “Now you can lean back. How does it feel?”

John cautiously tilted his back to rest against the special support. Sitting up made him feel immensely more in control of his existence. He didn’t want to lie to Carson, so he was very relieved that the low level throb he had been experiencing did not flare up. “It’s fine, Doc.”

Once again, Carson looked at him critically, “Colonel, for the next few days you must be honest and tell us if you experience any additional pain on your back. Toughing it out could compromise the viability of the skin grafts. Do ye understand?”

“Yes Carson, it’s crystal clear. I don’t feel any more pain than I had before when I was lying on my side. It’s just a very low level, uncomfortable tender sensation. Nothing more,” John said in his most reasonable tone. “I promise to tell you if anything changes.”

“Good,” said Carson as he plopped back down on the chair.

They talked for several minutes. Or rather Carson talked and John replied with one word answers, nods and grunts. By the time they were done, John was reassured that he had definitely not caught any STDs and that he would be able to perform all of his bodily functions (the necessary ones and the fun one) without any physical problems. The smooth running of one of these functions required him to be a good boy and drink the prescribed stool softener for the next few days. In the interest of personal comfort, he could certainly deal with that. Almost on cue, his stomach growled.

“I’ll have some breakfast brought to you. You need to regain the weight you lost. We had you on a liquid diet via the NG tube but that’s certainly not enough.” Carson said.

“I’m kind of hungry. But, Carson, one more favor: could I have some pants please?”

“Aye, but only if you let me help you put them on,” Carson started to rummage through the drawers of the corner cabinet.

“I don’t need …,” John started.

Carson interrupted him. “I can’t have you pull any stitches on your arm. Let me help you or otherwise you’ll get no pajama bottoms. And if you rest after ye eat, we’ll unhook the IV line and have you walk around a bit. Okay?”

“Yeah and thanks Doc, for all your help with this, this stuff …” said John, very sincerely. He saw no point in pushing Carson any further. He would save his questions about when he could take a shower and when he would be released from the infirmary for later.

“You’re welcome, John.” Carson walked back to his bedside holding the coveted infirmary-issue white pajama pants. “Ye know that you’re going to have to talk with Dr. Robinson. Right?”

John fixed a very reassuring expression on his face, “Yeah, don’t worry I’ll be as straight as possible with Robinson. With Rodney still missing, I don’t have time to putz around being difficult. I also have to write an official report. I don’t know which one is going to be worse.” As he said the words, it occurred to him that since his arm was in a sling, he might be able to postpone writing the report for a few more days. That was a pleasant thought.

Instead of helping him with the pants, Carson sat down. “Dear Lord, I almost forgot. Do you remember what ye told me about what happened to you?”

John had no idea where this conversation was going. “Yes, of course I do. I admit that I was a little groggy when I woke up, but, for better or for worse, my memory is perfect now. Why?”

“I had to tell Mr. Woolsey, Jennifer, Teyla and Ronon what I knew about why you were kidnapped and what you went through while in captivity.”

“That’s okay. I expected you to break the news to them. Woolsey is my commander, Jennifer is the CMO, and Teyla and Ronon are …. my closest friends.” He’d meant to say family, but the word was too personal to come out. “You broke the ice for me, that’s good. I’ll know that they’ll keep it confidential.”

“Of course they will. What I wanted to tell you is that I didn’t tell Woolsey, Teyla and Ronon about what the guard did during your escape.”

So far, John had avoided reminiscing about that part of his misadventures. “Why?”

“I’m not sure. Everybody, including me, was shaken up about the other news. And I worried about what your military would think about that if it went on your medical records,” Carson ran his fingers through his short hair. “When I thought about it more, it just seemed like a private matter for you to decide to share or not.”

Unsure how to react to this, John swallowed hard and said, “Thank you.”

“But I really recommend full disclosure in talking with Dr. Robinson. And if ye need someone else to talk to, I’m here as a friend. All right?”

“Okay but now, will you please help me with the pants?”

John really appreciated Carson’s offer, but he didn’t think that he would take him up on it. Talking about this stuff was going to be very difficult and already there were two people he would not be able to dodge—Teyla and Robinson. Despite how much he dreaded it, he definitely had to spill his guts (or most of them) to the base psychologist to get cleared for duty and get back to the search for Rodney. And while he doubted that the things he had done were forgivable, he also needed to tell Teyla everything. Undoubtedly, keeping it secret would only end up biting him in the ass, permanently screwing up their relationship (absolutely no pun intended). John was convinced that, despite the turmoil it would cause both of them, Teyla deserved to know the latest depths he had fallen into.

As Carson discreetly helped him maneuver his into the pants, John remembered that he needed to talk with a third person—Kharla.


	23. Chapter 23

After Carson left the room, John contemplated getting a little more shut-eye. While he would not openly admit this to anyone, the physical exam and the “chat” with the Doc had exhausted his apparently very limited reserves of energy. As if the whole thing didn’t suck enough, being on death’s door for a couple of days really did a number on a person’s stamina.

The one thing preventing him from totally checking out was the temptation to get up and go to the bathroom, which was just a few steps away. It wasn’t as if the call of nature was making any pressing demands on him, rather it was the urge to visually check the progress of his physical recovery, especially that of certain equipment. He certainly could not do it here, in the open comfort of the bed even though, thanks to a combination of rank and misfortune, he had the privilege of being in a private room. Someone might walk in at any moment without even thinking of knocking fist.

To determine the likelihood of successfully accomplishing this mission to the bathroom, he assessed the state of his arms, the main impediments to his mobility. A long catheter tubing tethered the left forearm to the saline drip; a sling imprisoned the right arm. To go to the bathroom, he would have to drag the IV pole with him and do all his business without messing the IV apparatus or his injured right arm. The alternative would be to unhook the IV line. Not a difficult task per se, he had watched it done countless of times and he had been taught how to do it as part of his field emergency medical training. The very tricky part was doing it one-handed without wreaking havoc to the stitches on his bicep. In his expert opinion, both strategies would probably hurt and, worse, the result would really piss-off Carson—something the poor guy did not deserve after all he had done for him.

Funny thing was that not too long ago, John wouldn’t have hesitated to go forward with one of those two plans and declare his independence by getting out of bed without prior medical clearance. But now he was weighing the pros and cons, like some sort of responsible and mature individual. What the hell, when had he gotten that old? Or could he chalk it up to just being too damn tired?

As he sat there debating with himself, the door slid open and Marie walked in holding a tray. She took one look at him and her lips turned up in an indulgent smile.

“Hello, Colonel Sheppard. I see that I got here just in time to stop your escape,” she said.

She placed the tray on the wheeled hospital table at the foot of the bed. In addition to utensils and a napkin, the tray held a glass of orange juice, a cup of diced canned peaches, a blueberry muffin (his favorite), and something else hidden by a white round plate cover.

John put on his most surprised, innocent look, “You’re reading me wrong, Marie. I’m starving and not going anywhere until I get some solid food in my belly.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said. She picked up his left arm and carefully inspected the IV site, which was visible under the transparent dressing. “I am going to take this out so you’ll have a free arm to eat. We will have to put in a new line later this afternoon to administer your next dose of intravenous antibiotics. Two more doses until you start on the oral meds.”

She walked to one of the cabinets and retrieved supplies, which she brought over and lined up on the night table. In a series of well practice moves, she dabbed alcohol on the adhesive dressing that secured the IV catheter to his flesh, before peeling it away without taking his hair with it. That expertly done move always amazed him, no matter how careful they were, the other nurses never managed to avoid ripping off at least some of his arm fuzz. Marie covered the area with a thick pad of gauze and then she withdrew the catheter, keeping the gauze firmly pressed over the insertion site. She raised his arm, holding it up for a minute or so before placing an adhesive bandage over the gauze and returning control of the arm to him.

After years of ending up under her care, John was quite used to the quiet, no non-sense way Marie worked. The best thing was that, unlike what happened with Carson, nothing she had done so far had spooked him. To John, that seemed like excellent progress. He felt like he was settling down.

“Let’s take your arm out of the sling while you sit in bed,” Marie said.

John felt only the slightest twinge of pain as she helped him slide the arm out of the sling and rest it propped up by a pillow. Marie explained the types of movements he was allowed to do and not do with that limb for the next few days. She also listed the dire consequences of not abiding to these limits. The worst bit of news was that he had to use the sling not only when walking around, but also while sleeping. That sounded like pure torture but he knew better than to complain.

“Okay, Marie, I get all the do’s and don’ts. Could I have my breakfast now, please?”

“Of course, Colonel.” She rolled the cart up to his lap and uncovered the plate to reveal a hefty portion of scrambled eggs and a couple of slices of lightly buttered toast. “Please let me know if you start feeling nauseous.”

John distractedly nodded his assent.  He felt strangely sentimental at the sight of the homey-looking food—closer to breakfast than lunch, probably because of some nutrition and ease of digestion issue. He knew perfectly well that the meal was going to taste bland at best. The eggs were reconstituted from dehydrated powder and their stocks of frozen sandwich bread were starting to suffer from freezer burn—soon the kitchen staff would have to bake their own. That was going to be an interesting culinary experience.

Normally he would have made a joke about this kind of food, but now he was inexplicably overjoyed at the sight of it. He picked up the fork and dug into it. He ate fast, the only thing slowing him down was the fact that he had to put the fork down to pick up the toast and, when he polished that off, the muffin. Using his right hand to feed himself was not on Marie’s allowed list—rule number whatever: do not raise the arm above a certain level, blah, blah.

He was perfectly aware that she was hovering in the room, doing busy work to keep an eye on him. Geez, how and when had he develop such a bad rap for not following all these sensible medical instructions?

In the middle of enjoying the gustatory delights generated by a mouthful of muffin (pretty good for boxed stuff), he sensed the presence of someone else standing by the previously left open doorway.

“I am glad that you are feeling well enough to eat, John. Perhaps, you should slow down so as not to make yourself ill?”

He dropped the rest of the muffin onto the plate and swallowed quickly. “Hi, Teyla. Care to join me?”

“No thank you. I already ate,” she said, her initially prim expression broadened into a smile. “I did not mean to interrupt your meal. Please continue, you need the nourishment.”

“If you insist,” he said, grinning back at her.

He drank some of the juice and picked up his fork to resume eating, this time at a more polite pace. He wasn’t looking at the food anymore. Instead, he was tracking Teyla’s every movement. God, he was so glad to see her.

She sat on the chair. He could feel her eyes scanning his face and body. He was doing the same thing to her. Since no doubt he looked like crap, he had the much better vista. He couldn’t help but notice that under the open jacket she wore one of those Athosian sleeveless tops that accentuated her well-defined shoulders and nicely framed her neckline and curvier assets.

Teyla had long ago adopted the Atlantis uniform pants, which certainly looked flattering on her (like everything else she wore, in his humble opinion) but, thank goodness, she had not acquired the habit of wearing their boring t-shirts. Naturally, they would look good on her too (especially if wet—an interesting idea), but the Athosian clothes were much more exotic and oh so sexy. As he thought about this, he realized that now he could (tactfully) verbalize such thoughts to her without sounding like the poster child for sexual harassment charges—not that Teyla even knew what those were. Going back to considering the sleeveless look, it was really too bad that this planet was so cold that they had to maintain Atlantis at a lower ambient temperature than their previous locations. Gone were the days when she never had to wear a jacket indoors.

It didn’t take him long to polish off the rest of the food and juice. He wiped his mouth with the napkin and settled back into the pillow. The hunger that had gnawed at his stomach subdued for now. He didn’t feel nauseous at all, just a little tired and sore in various places. Hopefully, everything would stay down and he could have another, preferably more substantial, meal in a few hours.   

Marie handed him three pills and a cup of water, “Please take your next round of pain meds, Colonel Sheppard.”

John contemplated objecting, until he saw Teyla’s trademark raised eyebrow expression. This variation telegraphed a clear “don’t even try it” message. He took the pills and swallowed them with one gulp of water.

Not doing a very good job at hiding her amusement, Marie picked up the tray and said, “Teyla, after you two talk for a bit, please encourage Colonel Sheppard to take a nap.”

“Of course, Marie, and I will ensure that he wears the sling before he goes to sleep,” said Teyla.

John wasn’t sure if he should be annoyed or amused that they were talking about him as if he was a kid.

“Thank you,” said Marie before addressing him. “Colonel, later this afternoon, if all your vital signs check out, Dr. Beckett has orders on your chart to get you to walk around and start rehab.”

“Great,” he said, meaning it. He hated this whole bedridden thing. The sooner he could get up, the sooner he could leave the infirmary and start getting back to normal. “Is there also a chance that I could get cleaned up without you or one of your colleagues giving me a sponge bath?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said before leaving the room. The door slid shut behind her.

He was finally alone with Teyla. This was the moment he had been waiting for many days and now he was hesitating about what to say and how to say it. There was so much he needed to tell her, but he couldn’t figure out which words to use, everything sounded too graphic, embarrassing or both. Earlier, instead of thinking about food and ogling over her looks, he should have put some serious thought into this. With a sigh, he decided to just spit it out, starting from the beginning or close to it.

“Teyla, I didn’t know what the hell was happening until I woke up tied to …” He lost his train of thought when his eyes suddenly welled with tears.

Completely dumbfounded by his own weepy state, he sat there speechless, probably making a very good impression of a deer caught in the head lights. He hadn’t cried in front of anyone since his mother’s funeral. He remembered noticing how his father and older brother, Dave, endured the whole endless ceremony never shedding a single tear. Even though, Dave had not teased him and his dad had gently patted his head and handed him tissues, he got the (in retrospect, mistaken) impression that he had done something wrong. While blowing his nose and mopping his wet face, his nine-year old self had vowed to himself to stop acting like such a baby. He felt like one right now.

“Oh, John.” Teyla rose to her feet and closed the distance between them in less than a heartbeat.

John remained too preoccupied to notice that she wasn’t being very eloquent either. She slipped her right hand into his left and cradled the side of his face with her other hand. Bending at the waist, she touched her forehead to his. He breathed in her intoxicating familiar scent—a mixture of flowery shampoo, herbal soap, maybe other things (perfume? deodorant?—some of the many details, small and big, that he needed to learn about her) and most of all, herself. He wanted to continue to breathe her in, until he could completely flush out the detritus left behind by that other woman, with her stinky candles and other odious things. A tear escaped his control and slid down his cheek, wetting her fingers. He freed his hand from hers and wiped his eyes.

“Sorry, I … I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said.

Moving her head back, so that she could look at him directly in the eyes, she lightly placed a finger on his lips to shush him. “Please John, do not say such things. You have nothing to apologize for. Everyone has limits to what they can and should endure, even those of us who do not wish to admit it.”

Thank goodness he was no longer hooked up to the monitors because he was certain that his heart beat erratically, as he took in air in choking inefficient gulps to fight down the sobs building up deep within him. It was no use. He had lost control of his emotions and, with Teyla standing so close and looking like she understood everything, he had no chance of snuffing them out unobtrusively. He hoped that no one walked in on them now because having someone else witness this might be worse than being caught tearing their clothes off and making out right here. This thought almost made him laugh.

She moved his hand away from his face and placed it on her own waist, as she smoothly settled herself onto the bed, her thigh pressing against his. Since she was perched on her half-kneeling leg, she sat higher than she normally would, making it easier for him to lean forward, burying his face in her hair and neck. She carefully placed one hand behind his neck and the other around his side, respectively high and low enough to avoid his various injuries. They were as close to each as she could manage without hurting him.

“I admit it—it was really, really bad. I’ll tell you but not yet,” he said softly in her ear.

“Whenever you are ready, I am here for you, John.”

Teyla held him while he collected himself. She ran her fingers through his hair and caressed him. He struggled to gather together all the parts of his being that had come loose. All in all, after what felt like a very dramatic start, it turned out to be a remarkably dry (and manly enough) breakdown, judging from the fact that his face barely felt wet and his nose did not run at all. But by John’s personal standards, it was a disaster. Vernara had not only totally fucked him physically, she had also done a mighty fine job screwing him up mentally.

“Thanks Teyla,” he said when he finally pulled back from her embrace. The position was starting to hurt his back.

He noticed that her eyes were also shiny with moisture. Without a thought, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek, tasting the salty wetness. While greatly tempted, something held him back from moving onto her lips. Most likely it was because his mouth tasted like crap since he hadn’t used toothpaste in about a week. He tried to shift his body sideways to make more room for her on the bed. He winced when the motion jarred his wounded arm.

“John, do not be foolish. Let me do the work,” she said, slipping off the bed.

“Okay,” he said, already missing the warmth of her body against his.

She picked up the sling than Marie had left and helped him maneuver the arm back into it. Anticipating that she was headed for the chair, he held her arm before she could move away.

“Teyla, please lie down with me?” He patted the empty side of the bed.

“I do not think that Dr. Beckett and Marie would approve,” she teased him.

“I don’t care,” he said, sounding petulant to his own ears. His effort at being a good patient had reached its daily quota. He felt drained. A nap sounded like a good idea.

She looked at him a little surprised. “Very well, but you must tell me if I do anything that worsens your pain.”

“Okay.”

Teyla stretched out on her side next to him, resting her head on the nook of his left shoulder without putting undue pressure on the healing, shallow knife cuts on his upper arm which (like most parts of his body, it seemed to him) were covered and cushioned by hydrogel dressing. His arm might fall asleep at some point, but for the moment nothing really hurt. In fact, the weight of her arm on his chest felt wonderful, despite the ridiculous hospital gown preventing any skin to skin contact.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” he said.

“You were not rude at all, John. You have no need to apologize.”

He didn’t want to think about all the other things he did have to apologize for, time for a change of topic. “How’s Torren? I really missed the little guy.”

“He missed you too. He asked about you often when you were missing. I told him that you might be well enough for him to visit you after his afternoon rest time. Would that be all right with you?”

“Yes, that sounds great,” he said.

“Perhaps, now you should also try to rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said closing his eyes.

He ignored all the thoughts and feelings clamoring for his attention by concentrating on matching his breathing rhythm to hers. He fell asleep quickly.


	24. Chapter 24

When John tried to shift his position, the pleasant dream he was having about Teyla metamorphosed into a nightmare. He was back in Vernara’s clutches, once again tied spread-eagle to her bed. This time, she used her knife to cut off his white, infirmary-issued pajamas. Each cut went much deeper than the cloth, nicking his skin and drawing blood. After she had him completely exposed, she dipped her fingers in the carvings and drew designs on his inner thighs. Once her hands were completely smeared with blood she went for his crotch.

With a gasp, he jerked awake. Very real pain shot through his arm and back. Teyla was leaning over the bed next to him, lightly pressing on his shoulders to slow down his upward motion. He collapsed back into the pillow.

“John, you are in the infirmary in Atlantis. Everything is fine,” Teyla said in a soothing tone.

“Yeah, sorry, just a dream,” said John, trying to reign in the frantic thumping in his chest. He placed his left hand over the throbbing bicep, pulling it firmly against his body to help settle down the pain. He had definitely broken one of Marie’s cardinal rules: no sudden movements—fine in theory, but really hard to stick to while in the throes of a nightmare. He better not have pulled any of the stitches. The last thing he needed was a lecture from Carson. 

He took the cup of water Teyla handed to him. “Thanks. How long was my nap?”

“Nearly two hours. Marie will be pleased,” she said.

“I aim to please.”

Teyla smiled. He liked having that effect on her. He watched her take the empty cup and place it back on the table. Everything she did, even the most mundane task was poetry in motion to his eyes—a cliché but true.

“How does your arm feel?” Teyla returned to his side.

“I just moved too fast. It’s fine now.” John reached over and took her hand into his. He squeezed it lightly and pulled her closer. He wasn’t prepared to share any details of his captivity, but there was something really important that he had to get off his chest. “Teyla, I thought about you and us a lot when I was gone. I … I don’t know what I would have done without those thoughts.”

Teyla looked a little stunned at his words. Her bright eyes bore into him and her thick long lashes flickered repeatedly. She was fighting back tears, a rare sight.

“I wish with all my heart that I could have done something to spare you what you have been through,” she said.

John detected no pity in her voice, just a deep sorrow and empathy. His first impulse was to reply with a his usual fall back phrase, “it’s okay,” but that was just too lame. One of the lessons he had learned in Khamala Prime—which, admittedly, he should have absorbed a long time ago, given the other many awful situations he had barely managed to escape—was that he was surrounded by many things that should be much scarier than enunciating three short words to express his most heartfelt sentiment. The excuse of not being so good communicating had become stale and pathetic. He needed to stop hiding behind it.

The way he felt inside right now reminded him of the night after Wraith-Rodney tried to fry him with stunner blasts. He had stood with Teyla at the control room balcony, getting chilled to the bone but warmed through the heart, watching snow fall on the Atlantis skyline. He had been on the verge of revealing his feelings for her. Completely tongue tied, he hadn’t managed to vocalize anything meaningful. Instead, like an inarticulate fool he had thrown the ball in her court, asking her if there was something they needed to talk about. He remembered her response by heart, _“There is nothing you need to say. There is nothing you could say to me that your actions have not said a thousand times.”*_ Her words and her actions demonstrated the depth of her conviction and her generosity towards his weaknesses. It had taken a long time, but he had finally gotten lucky. This amazing, intelligent and beautiful woman was willing to take him despite the massive load of damaged goods he hefted. He had no idea how that had happened. She deserved better and he would have to be a better man for her. Trying was no longer an option; he just had to make it happen.

“I love you,” he said. There, the words had slipped out of his mouth and his heart had not exploded. A small step for John Sheppard kind. Why had he been afraid to say it for so long?

Her face brightened up into one of those gentle smiles he liked to witness and loved to cause. “I love you too, John Sheppard.”

It sounded really special when that sentence came out of those lips. She sat on the edge of the bed and moved her free hand to languorously caress the line of his jaw. Her closeness and the sensation triggered by her sensuous fingers sent tiny shivers of pleasure down his spine. John noticed a twinge of a reaction from his nether regions—a promising sign, he thought. Knowing full well that, given his weakened state, it would be very fleeting, he closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation. In that instant, he had a flashback to Vernara pawing him in a similar but completely different manner. He fought the impulse to flinch away from the pressure of Teyla’s fingers on his cheek.

“Is there something wrong?” No longer smiling, Teyla looked concerned.

“No,” he answered too quickly to sound truthful. “I just realized that I need a shave.”

He was sickened by his reaction. It had to be some weird fluke. There was no way that Teyla’s touch could possibly remind him of Vernara. No way in hell. He was just still tired after having been very sick for four days. That had to be the only reasonable explanation.

She didn’t press him. Instead she followed his lead towards a safer topic of conversation. “Would you like me to retrieve your electric razor from your quarters and help you shave?”

“That would be great,” he said.

Given the amount of stubble on his face, he definitely would not be able to do a good job left handed. Teyla’s idea did sound much more enjoyable than having Marie or one of the guy nurses shave him. It was one thing for them to do it while he was unconscious (indeed, it was probably the least embarrassing thing they did to care for him while he was helpless like that), but quite a different thing to be subjected to it while awake.

His thoughts jumped from these mundane grooming worries to much more pressing matters. Lost between his messed-up emotions and happiness of being with Teyla, he had almost forgotten his responsibilities to the person who helped him escape from Khamala Prime.

“Ronon said that you talked to Kharla. Is she okay? She was in that hell of a place for over two months. I don’t even want to think about how they treated her.”

“I have spoken with her a few times and she has had several private sessions with Dr. Robinson. Kharla is clearly a strong young woman who has successfully faced many adversities in her short life.”

John had certainly witnessed Kharla’s strength first hand. It took a lot of guts for anyone to take the risk she took in helping him and react the way she did when she had a knife at her throat. He always liked to give credit where credit was due. “I wouldn’t have made it back without her. I owe her my life.”

“She says the same thing about your actions. She also feels much guilt about what she did to you,” Teyla said.

John’s mind froze at the thought of what Kharla might have confessed. “It wasn’t her fault. She had no control.”

“I know. She explained to Dr. Robinson and me how she could not stop her hands from cutting your back. She was very distraught and apologetic. Both of us have repeatedly tried to tell her that she should not blame herself. Dr. Robinson even had Dr. Keller explain to her how the drugs she inhaled and the hypnosis worked in a powerful conjunction to strip her of any control over her own body. Despite all explanations we offered, I could see it in her eyes how she remains unconvinced that she was not at fault.”

“I tried to tell her too. I need to talk to her again,” John said.

He was relieved that Kharla hadn’t mentioned the other thing she probably felt guilty about. That was also not her fault. If anyone other than Vernara was at fault, it was him for not having figured out sooner what that bitch had been planning to do. No matter how difficult the conversation was bound to be, he had to find a way to convince Kharla to give herself some slack. She was far too young to carry such a burden.

The rarely heard door chime rang. They released their hold on each other and Teyla slipped off the bed.

“Come in,” John said.

Marie and Carson walked in.

“Ye look slightly better lad. How’re ye feeling?” Carson gave him a stern appraising look. “And I’m warning you that “I’m fine” isn’t an acceptable answer.”

John quickly stopped his default response. “My arm is a little sore. I might’ve jerked it in my sleep.”

“Let me take a look,” Carson said.

Teyla made her goodbyes, promising to come back later with Torren and bring John’s electric razor and Mp3 player. There was no point in also fetching his Nintendo DS since he wasn’t dexterous enough to play it left handed.

The next hour and a half drained John of all the rejuvenating effects of the afternoon nap. After a thorough examination, Carson declared him fit enough to get off the bed to stretch his legs and tend to some personal hygiene matters. This blessing opened the door for the two of them to supervise his every movement as he sat up on the bed, swung over his legs to the side, stood up and took several steps back and forth in the room. The whole time, John was on high-alert to act nonchalant whenever they touched him and to tone down the temptation to reply sarcastically as they repeatedly asked him about dizziness and pain. He didn’t feel dizzy at all and his various injuries didn’t hurt any more than they had when he was lying in bed.

They didn’t give him much trouble when he asked to go to the bathroom and wash up by himself. Maybe it was because he had been such a model patient, but John suspected, more likely they were giving him unprecedented leeway because they knew that now more than ever he needed privacy. While they were right, it still felt very disconcerting to realize how he continued to fail masking his inner turmoil. He had no doubt that while these consummate professionals would never gossip about him, they would certainly mention to Robinson their concerns about his emotional state.

Carson warned him to use the stool in the shower and not to raise the left arm above his shoulder. Marie explained that he had to use the handheld nozzle and avoid directly soaking his back and arm. The dressing there, like elsewhere on his body, was water resistant to a remarkable degree (while still allowing for oxygenation and all the other scientific babble necessary for speedy wound recovery), but it would not withstand direct exposure to water or immersion (so dancing naked in the rain or a bath were also out for the foreseeable future). They were going to change the dressing to his back after the shower. Carson also admonished him not to lock the bathroom and gave him a fifteen minute time limit before Marie was to check in on him. Relieved at how little he had to push to get his request approved, John readily agreed.

Escorting him to the bathroom, Marie placed on the counter a short stack of towels (they tended to be small), a fresh pair of pajama pants and underwear. She reminded him again to use the stool that was already in the shower before she left him to do his business.

Once ensconced alone in the bathroom, John didn’t waste time. He wanted to do everything quickly and efficiently, not because of the time limit, but because dwelling on things most likely would trigger flashbacks—something he could not afford to experience right now.

So he proceeded in a mechanical way as if running down a pre-flight checklist: pee (no problem there, thankfully), remove sling (hang it on a hook for reuse), slip off hospital gown (kick it to a corner), turn on water and set to desired temperature (ATA mental commands never got old), pull down pants (kick to corner). Everything proceeded at a smooth pace until he glanced up at the slanted mirror that hung over the sink.

He froze at the sight of the vast array of yellowing bruises, pink scrapes, minor cuts and other damage decorating his mid-body, and most glaring of all, the complete absence of the previously thick mat of curly pubic hair. Nothing hid the tell-tale healing bruises there and the contrast between that and his otherwise rather hairy body looked simultaneously ridiculous and obscene. Fury rose within him. He looked around for something to kick or smash to release it. Rejecting the mirror for obvious reasons, the stool in the shower and the chair in the corner looked very tempting. Instead of grabbing either one, he muttered a string of expletives to regain a grip on himself.

Back in control, he resumed going through his checklist, reminding himself over and over again not to use his right arm and not to think about anything. Sitting like an octogenarian on the stupid plastic stool, he used the handheld showerhead to wet his body. He waved the wet wash cloth under the automatic soap dispenser and squeezed it a few times to work up the suds. He methodically worked the cloth all over the reachable and non-bandaged parts of his body. Then he rinsed off. Continuing on his quest not to think about anything substantial, he watched the rivulets of soapy water slide down his body, merge together and flow down the drain. The liquid looked much cleaner than it was.

Next, he leaned forward to keep water off his back as he thoroughly wet his hair and shampooed it. This was not an easy feat to do solely with his left hand but he managed it nicely. His hair and scalp still felt grungy so he shampooed and rinsed it again. 

Finally, he stood up, turned the water to a hotter setting and aimed the jet toward his lower body, moving it up to his hips and down, front and back (within the limits of his reach) to scour away any lingering traces of Khamala Prime. For a second he felt as if he was back at the waterfall in M8J-367, when he had tried to do the same thing with much colder water. The result was the same. He still felt dirty and his time was up. He shut off the water.

Using all the towels in the bathroom, he dried up and put on the underwear and pajama bottoms. He lingered at the mirror for only the amount of time it took to run the comb through his hair. Beyond the paleness and slightly bloodshot eyes, it seemed that his face was the least banged up part of his body. He wanted not to dwell on the reason why, but a little voice in his head said that Vernara enjoyed sucking on his face and deep throating him with her tongue too much to spoil her own fun by damaging that part of her playground. He left the bathroom when one of Vernara’s most atrocious lines of dialogue popped in his head, something about how much she enjoyed the way his eyes changed color. Not only had he to bear her hands all over him, he also had to endure all the melodramatic syrupy claptrap she uttered. Killing that woman had not been enough.

“Colonel Sheppard, are you okay?” said Marie. She was putting the final touches on his re-freshened bed, a neat pile of dirty linens near her feet.

“Uh? I’m fine. The shower felt great but it made me a little drowsy.”

“That’s understandable. Please take your pain meds,” she handed him four pills and a cup of water to chase them down. “Dr. Beckett will be back shortly to check on the skin grafts.”

Marie helped him lie down on his stomach. This was not the most comfortable position because of his arm, but he could easily endure it while they took care of his back. Carson returned and the two of them got to work, carefully removing the dressing. Carson narrated every step they took, but John was too tired to pay attention. He dozed off during the procedure, exhaustion winning over any worries he might have had about two people touching him. The dull, all enveloping throbbing emanating from his back and arm didn’t bother him anymore. It had become background noise.

After they were done, they must have rolled him to his side and placed pillows to make him more comfortable. That was the position he found himself when he woke up alone in the room. He had no memory of how he got propped up like that or of getting a fresh IV inserted in his left arm. The pasty feeling in his mouth made him suspect that Marie gave him something to help him relax before the procedure. Maybe the drug was still at work because he didn’t feel any anger towards them. Obviously they had wanted to spare him from experiencing more flashbacks, not a bad goal, at least for today. He promised himself to ask about the nature of any pills Marie gave him in the future. He carefully sat up on the bed and grabbed the cup of water from the night table. While he sipped from it, the door chimed again.

“Come in,” he said pleased to know that there were more people than he realized that respected his privacy.

“Hello, Colonel Sheppard. I am very glad to see that you are feeling better,” said Woolsey as he walked in.

“Thank you, sir. Carson might let me out of here tomorrow.”

“Yes, I heard. I also heard that you will not be cleared to return to duty for several days.”

John hadn’t been told that yet, but he suspected it. “I should be able to get back to light duty sooner than that.”

Woolsey smiled knowingly, “That would be for Doctors Beckett and Keller to decide. As you know, the treating physician and the CMO have jurisdiction on such matters.”

“Yeah, I’ll work on them.” John eyed Woolsey carefully as the man stood by his bedside. He was trying to judge if this was just a quick visit to check on his recovery or whether Woolsey wanted him to give a sit rep. He hoped for the former. “Any new leads on McKay?”

“Unfortunately, not yet. Major Evans is due back soon; perhaps he will have better news.” Woolsey paused and pointed at the chair. “May I?”

“Please do,” said John, amused at the formality. He had grown very comfortable working with Woolsey. He was smart, principled and had admirably ballsy diplomatic skills, and some of his behavioral quirks were endearingly hilarious. While he certainly was not on par with Elizabeth Weir as a leader and a friend, Woolsey had absolutely earned his respect as the commander of the Atlantis expedition.

“Listen, Colonel, I know that you are very anxious to return to leading the search for Dr. McKay and, frankly, I am eager for you to do so too. However, you must not rush through your recovery and we must proceed per SOP in dealing with your escape from imprisonment by hostiles.”

That was a very nice oblique way of putting it—Vernara and her goons had certainly been hostile.

“Sir, I apologize for not briefing you on what happened to me sooner. My capture and captivity by these hostiles in no way compromised the security of Atlantis. They never questioned me. Their interests were, uhm, personal …”

“An apology is truly not necessary or expected, Colonel. You clearly required immediate medical attention. Given the seriousness of your injuries, it was perfectly appropriate for you to request it before briefing me. While you were unconscious, Dr. Beckett relayed the explanation you provided him to us and the next day Ms. Kharla Rhamana graciously told us enough details of your escape to help me decide on a course of action.”

For a second, John mulled over the revelation of Kharla’s last name. He had never bothered to ask her during their escape, not that they had much time or inclination to chit chat that day. Then he grasped the meaning of Woolsey’s last statement. Obviously, his boss had to deal with the repercussions of the kidnapping of his military commander and his subsequent escape, which was littered by three dead bodies, including one belonging to an influential family, two incapacitated guards, and one missing bonded servant. John didn’t know if bonded servitude was considered legal by the Coalition—he certainly hoped not. There had to be all sorts of political repercussions that he hadn’t even thought of.

“What did you decide to do?”

“I’ll give you all the details at a later time. Suffice it to say that I made a formal complaint with Chancellor Zarneon and the Coalition Council against the Alkamade family in Khamala Prime.” Woolsey expression darkened as he continued. “I made it clear that kidnapping one of my people is not acceptable and that if you hadn’t already efficiently taken care of matters, Atlantis’ military response to this hostile attack would have been much more punishing.”

“Good to hear that. I look forward to getting the full story.” John pointed to the sling. “As soon as I get the green light to use my right arm, I’ll write up the report. And I expect that Dr. Robinson will visit me soon to start with the psych evaluation and counseling.”

John was quite familiar with the standard operating procedures that applied to his circumstances. He had helped Elizabeth adapt these and other military SOPs to work within the staffing constraints and isolation of their expedition. He himself, had obviously gone through the process several times. Past experience did not make it easier.

Woolsey pulled a small object out of his jacket pocket and handed it to John. “In the interest of expediting matters, here is a digital recorder for you to use to prepare the report after you are released from the infirmary. And I expect this verbal report to contain a few more details than those usually provided by Mr. Dex.”

John smiled at the continued proof that, contrary to all appearance, Woolsey did have a solid sense of humor. Almost two years ago, Woolsey had instituted a policy requiring all members of an away team, not just the team leader, to submit mission reports. Frustrated that Ronon always seemed to forget to do it, Woolsey finally succumbed to asking him to record a verbal report that would be automatically transcribed into the electronic record.† John had reviewed all of Ronon’s reports, each one was the masterful essence of brevity either because Ronon was trying to piss-off Woolsey or (more likely) because that was his nature. Despite their complete lack of informative value, Woolsey had not relented on this mandatory reporting. John thought that Woolsey probably got a kick out of comparing and contrasting their different reporting styles. His team provided the widest spectrum, ranging from Ronon’s Tweeter length messages to McKay’s thesis’ sized monstrosities.

“How detailed do you want the report, sir?”

A light blush colored Woolsey normally pale complexion. “I leave it up to your own discretion to provide the essential information. I’ll review it and discuss with you any pertinent matters before entering it into the record. All right?”

“Yes, thank you.”

\-----------------------------------

*The scene and quote that John remembers are from Jo Graham & Amy Grisworld’s _Stargate Atlantis: The Lost_. Book two of the _Legacy Series_. Page 307.

†Mr. Woolsey started this policy in _The Prodigal_ Season 5 episode.


	25. Chapter 25

John finally got discharged after a tedious morning in the infirmary getting wounds assessed and re-bandaged, and being bombarded by streams of instructions from Beckett and Marie. He had to check in twice a day, in the morning and evening, abide with the prescribed pain medication and antibiotic regimens, eat and rest as much as possible. The key message was that he could spend the rest of his sick leave resting and recuperating in his own quarters. The thought of that helped him get through those hours without snapping at the next person who touched him.

The door swished open and John was greeted by the welcome sight of his tidy room. Someone had definitely dusted and swept the floor, leaving everything exactly where he had placed it over a week before. The Atlantis housekeeping staff were unsung heroes, in his opinion. He steered around the neatly made bed and headed for the solitary comfy chair. Next to it, his golf bag rested perched against the window sill. It would be a while before he could practice his swing but maybe he could work on using the putter with his left arm. You never knew when that type of skill would come in handy.

He propped against the back of the chair the memory cushion that Marie had given him to safeguard his still tender back. Then he held the sling still against his stomach while he cautiously lowered himself into the seat. He couldn’t believe how tired he was from the short walk and transport jaunt from the infirmary to his quarters. He really hoped that it wouldn’t take too long to get back into shape. A good night sleep would help too. Between the nightmares and infirmary noises, he hadn’t gotten much rest since he had regained consciousness.

“John, are you certain that you do not need anything else?” said Teyla, his official escort out of the infirmary.

John was pretty sure that what Teyla wanted to really ask him was if he was going to be all right being left alone in his own room. He wondered about what precautions and concerns Carson had secretly shared with her. He didn’t see them talk but he had no doubt that they had a conversation so that Carson could prep Teyla about what to expect from him. He didn’t resent them; he just wished they weren’t so convinced that it was so necessary. It’s not as if he hadn’t been tortured and imprisoned before, and gotten over it. He just wanted to lay to rest this latest incident and move on to the important stuff, like finding Rodney. Oh yeah, and also fighting the Wraith.

“Yes, Teyla, I’ll be fine. I’ll just relax here for a bit, maybe even take a nap.” John smiled and held his features in a neutral expression under her scrutinizing gaze. “You go to your meeting with Woolsey. You know how he is about punctuality. I heard his lecture once and I really don’t recommend it.”

Teyla smiled while she glanced at the digital clock on the low dresser that sat against the wall next to his bed. “It is not yet time for me to go. ” She placed on the bed the extra pillow that Marie had given her. “If you decide to sleep, would it not be more comfortable to lie on the bed instead of the chair?”

“Actually, this is the perfect chair for taking naps.” John patted the arm rest like the back of an old friend. “With all their high-tech know-how, the Ancients never produced a piece of furniture that is as comfortable as this genuine American invention.”

To demonstrate, he took his right arm out of the sling and pulled the extra-long handle of the recliner. The mechanism required minimal force so it didn’t hurt—well, maybe just a twinge. The back tilted and the footrest rose, giving him a clear view of his running shoes. It felt weird to be wearing them instead of his usual boots. Despite the fact that he had on his usual black button-down shirt because a t-shirt would have been too hard to put on with his bum arm, the rest of his getup (sweatpants, no weapons) advertised his off-duty status.  

Instead of putting his arm back in the sling, he laid it on the armrest. The sling was giving him a stiff neck and his elbow had started to complain about its immobilization. Sitting with his legs up was so much better than laying on a bed, which he had done way too much in the past few days. He was very glad that during their way too long stay on Earth, he had opted to furnish his room with a fancy recliner. Despite Rodney’s insistence that plugging it into the Atlantis power grid would be no problem, he had decided against buying one with powered option because that seemed way too decadent and, from a practical side, the electrical components were likely to break down much more easily than the simple mechanical ones.

“Lazy boy is a good name for this cleverly designed chair,” Teyla said, smiling.

She had just returned from placing his razor, toothbrush and other toiletries back in the bathroom. The previous evening, John had really gotten a kick out of Torren assisting Teyla in shaving his face. It reminded him of the few times when he was a little kid that his father had pretended to shave him too, removing the gobs of shaving cream that he had splattered on his face. Those were the happy days before his mother died.

Teyla placed a cup of water on the windowsill on the left of the chair and slid her hand over his forearm, squeezing it lightly. He felt her warmth through the fabric of his shirt sleeve. Irresistibly drawn to her, he wrapped his good arm around her hip in a wordless invitation. In response, she eased herself into his lap. His hand lingered on her lower back, where her top had risen above the waistband of the pants. The skin to skin contact was a balm to his troubled thoughts. Before, just the pressure of her weight would have started activity in his crotch. Now, nothing was happening down there. Nada, zilch, niente. He tried to believe himself as he chalked it up to the fact that his body still had ways to go before a full recovery.

“This is nice.” He nuzzled the back of her neck, hoping that her sexy aroma would completely purge his lungs of the lingering imprint from Vernara’s noxiously scented candles. “After Carson gives me the green light to use this arm, I’d like to show you some interesting ways to use this chair.”

“I believe I would enjoy that very much.” She caressed his jawline and moved her fingers through his hair before resting them lightly on the back of his neck.

He watched her to rememorize her lovely features and afraid that closing his eyes would trigger a flashback. His ongoing efforts to shove all those memories away in a safe corner of his mind where not working. Since he had regained consciousness, all sorts of things, mostly sounds and touches, unexpectedly zapped him back to some of the worst moments on Khamala Prime.

Gazing into the lustrous oak pools of her eyes, he leaned forward to kiss her. Their lips barely brushed before he stopped himself, pulling back to a safer distance. An unbidden reminder of where his mouth had been stopped him in his tracks.

“What is the matter?” Teyla said.

“Nothing, it’s just that I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.” He plastered what he hoped was a reassuring grin on his face.

Teyla seemed on the verge of objecting but instead she said, “John, when you are ready, I hope that you will talk to me about what happened. I can see how difficult this has been on you. Maybe even harder than all the other terrible experiences you have previously gone through since you arrived in Pegasus.”

“Yeah, a Wraith Queen hammering through my brain might have been a better option.” This thought sounded much funnier when it had first popped into his head. He noticed a flicker of anger pass through her eyes before she smothered it. He wasn’t sure if she was mad at him or at the whole situation.

“I for one am glad that you were not in the hands of the Wraith. You have already been unprecedentedly fortunate in escaping from them too many times in the past. Such good fortune should not be tested again,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I know that in the great scope of things this should be trivial compared to being fed upon by Todd or one of his friends. It just doesn’t feel that way.”

“John, what happened to you was not trivial by any means. Please do not think that.” Teyla rubbed his arm up and down, her hand stopping just above the bandages around his wrist.

“I don’t really think that … I guess. It’s just that I need to move on from this quickly. It happened. I killed those who did it and I escaped. Beckett and Keller fixed me up. End of story. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to compartmentalize it, like other stuff.” John clearly remembered how after he came back from his encounter with Todd, he had a few nightmares but nothing that affected how he acted outwardly with his team or others in Atlantis. His stoic façade lightened up with perfect doses of sarcasm had been spot on. Even the knowledge that others had witnessed his unspeakable pain and humiliation at being tied to a chair and gagged while a Wraith fed on him hadn’t left him feeling as jittery and weak as he felt now.

Teyla stayed quiet while he scrambled to find a way to explain himself. This was doubly difficult since he didn’t really understand all his mixed up emotions. His thoughts kept on leaping from one idea to its complete opposite. “I am used to resisting all kinds of interrogation techniques but what Vernara did was nothing like that. She didn’t want any secret information from me. She just wanted to use me … my body to get herself off, over and over, and it took me way too long to find a way to stop her. There had to be something else I could have done.”  

With unexpected force, Teyla grasped his forehand and pulled it up to his line of sight. “Please listen. All the barely healing marks on your skin, and what is under this bandage and all the others on your body tell the story of how much you did to try to prevent this abuse.” She gently placed his arm back down. “I know that I cannot stop you from reassessing your actions and decisions. All I ask is that when you do so, you make certain to weigh every alternative action against the fact that by doing what you did you made it out. If you had done one or more things differently, would you have been able to remain alive and fit enough to seize the opportunity to escape? You returning back here is what is important for yourself, me, Torren, everyone in Atlantis and Rodney too.”

“You might not feel the same way if I tell you all that happened. The things I did.” The softly spoken words fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“Do not even think that,” she said with an almost angry snap. She returned to her normal, kind cadence as she continued. “I know you, John, and I am certain that you did what you had to do to survive. What I would have done in the same situation. You know there is nothing that you need to keep hidden from me. I want to help you. Please allow me to do so.”

Struck at the thought of Teyla being placed in the same type of situation, tied down by a male version of Vernara, made him feel sick. Just what he needed, another nightmare image to get out of his mind.

“I do want your help. I just need to sort some things out first.” He looked at Teyla—unquestionably the love of his life—a beautiful, intelligent and unbelievably strong person who had already been exposed to so much sorrow and brutality. Should he really add to her burden? “You know that this chat we’re going to have is going to be very unpleasant for both of us?”

“Yes, I do. As you will find the words to express yourself and release your burden, I will find the strength to listen. You cannot keep this inside you. You have already done that too much these past years. Doing so with this will only hurt you even more than she already did.”

“Yeah, but …”

She shushed him with a finger touch to his lips. “No buts. Think about this, John. If it had been me, kidnapped and sexually assaulted before I managed to escape, would you have wanted me to keep everything bottled inside, eating away at my soul?”

“Of course not.” What else could he say? That this was different because she was a woman, a female, the more typical victim of rape? Even he wasn’t stupid enough or so completely lost in his maelstrom of second-guessing thoughts to make that argument. Searching the room, as if his furniture and possessions could provide a viable counter-argument, his eyes fell on the clock. “You’re going to be late and I need to do the report for Woolsey.”

She got off his lap. “Would you like me to stay with you while you record your report? I could reschedule the meeting. I am certain that Mr. Woolsey would understand.”

“No, I need to do this by myself.” He could see her skepticism. “Please Teyla. We’ll talk later, I promise.”

“After the meeting, I will come back here with Torren and then we can go to lunch together.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“Do not forget to take your pain medications,” she reminded him as she walked out.

After the door slid shut, John pulled out the digital recorder from the left pocket of his sweatpants. The small metallic case felt cool as he twirled it in his hand. He eyed the view from the window. The sky was crystal blue, unmarred by a single cloud—it looked perfectly beautiful except for the tell-tale high speed whirling of the propeller of the nearest recently installed anemometer—another brutally windy day on this ice planet. Wind chill minus who knew how many freeze-your-butt-off degrees. He sighed, recording his report while sitting outside on one of the far-flung docks was not going to be an option. He just had to bite the bullet and do it here. Now. Getting a mission report to Woolsey was an essential step to making his way back to the duty roster, even if with restrictions.

He resisted the temptation to start off with a suitably cynic Captain’s log stardate entry. He doubted that Woolsey would appreciate it, despite a certain resemblance between him and Jean-Luc Picard. This was something that he and McKay would normally spend some quality time mulling over—he trully missed the guy. When they got him back, they should  introduce _Star Trek the Next Generation_ to Teyla and Ronon to get their opinion about the Jean-Luc similarity and their thoughts about their own respective alter egos, Deanna Troi and Worf. _Focus, John, focus_ , he told himself.

He had to consult his PDA to figure out the correct date to state at the start of the report. This whole debacle had already taken him out from the search for McKay for nine days, four in captivity and five in the infirmary. Despite Teyla’s pep talk, this realization flared up anger at Vernara and at himself for allowing it to happen and not stopping it sooner.

He took a deep breath and got started. He gave the briefest background of the meeting with the Coalition members that led to their visit to the market. That felt so long ago that he had to think hard to remember the name of the planet. Then he got into the meat of things.

_“... An arrow struck me in the arm and before I had a chance to react, my body went numb and I lost consciousness. I woke up with my arms bound and gagged. I tried unsuccessfully to escape. The next time I woke up, I found myself very securely tied to a huge bed in a luxuriously furnished underground room. My weapons, boots and uniform were gone. My captors had left me in my underwear. The sole occupant of the room introduced herself as Lady Vernara Alkamade. Not the most rational of personalities, she was very angry at me for turning her down when she had made a pass at me at Chancellor Zarneon’s gala three months ago. I barely remembered the encounter._

_This may seem hard to believe but she said that she had me kidnapped to, to …”_

He stopped himself from saying, _fuck me to death_. He paused the recording and took another deep breath. He let it out slowly, trying one of those breathing exercises that Teer and, more recently, Teyla had tried to teach him. He clutched the recorder, contemplating throwing it across the room. Maybe it was a good thing that he couldn’t do this outside where the temptation to launch it far into the ocean would have been too great to resist.

More deep breaths. He just had to get through this by keeping it simple, avoiding crude words and staying detached. He turned on the recorder again and continued talking in a monotone, while staring at the snippet of sky visible from the window.  

_“Alkamade had me kidnapped and dragged across a bunch of stargates to be delivered to her for the sole purpose of her sexual entertainment. She had no intention of seducing me. She never questioned me about Atlantis or anything else about the expedition. I told her I wasn’t interested and tried to reason with her. She cut my arm with her knife and threatened to flay me alive if I didn’t stop arguing with her. By now firmly convinced that the woman was deranged I shut up, more or less. Expertly physically restrained, I couldn’t stop her repeated sexual assault which she carried out with the aid of devices and products straight from a BDSM shop.”_

The sour taste of his partly digested breakfast rose in his mouth. He paused the recording again and got off the chair without putting down the footrest. Sharp twinges of pain in his arm and back reminded him that his body couldn’t yet take such sudden motions. He went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. The reflection in the mirror looked haunted. He couldn’t stop himself from obsessing about what he should have done differently.

He thought about what he had already recorded, worrying if he had said too much or too little. He hoped that Woolsey was not going to think that he had some first-hand knowledge of BDSM practices—he just couldn’t come up with another way of saying that his dick had been forced to repeatedly cooperate with Vernara against his will.

Determined to get this over with, he went back to the bedroom and grabbed the recorder. Instead of sitting in the recliner, he stood by the window leaning against the wall. He pressed the record button and plowed ahead.

_“After she was done, she had her three personal guards tie my arms behind my back and blindfold me before taking me to a window-less cell. I was in no condition to fight them off and I could not escape the cell. I slept for a while. I don’t really know how much time passed. Two guards brought me some food which, after debating the pros and cons, I decided to eat. As I was finishing the meal, the guards let a young woman named Kharla into the cell to change the dressing on my arm. Kharla told me that she was a bonded servant. After a little bit of prompting, she shared some basic information with me. She told me the name of the planet, Khamala Prime, and that it was midday. She said Alkamade went through one or two captives like me—bedroom companions she called them—a month. When she tired of them she either sold them off to offworlders or had them killed. Kharla also warned me that the food had been laced with cossan fruit, which turned out to be a super-strength prune._

_I slept again and then I was sick for a while. The guards came back. They tied my arms, blindfolded and gagged me.  They took me to a room and placed me in restraints which seemed to be attached to the floor and ceiling. A bunch of servants washed me. The guards took me back to Vernara’s chambers and secured me to her bed again so that I could not move my arm and legs. During all of these transfers I had no opportunity to even attempt an escape._

_Vernara had more sexual jollies at my expense. I hoped for a chance to a get a hold of the knife she kept strapped to her leg. Vernara took a break from sexual assault to whip me to teach me a lesson about… I don’t remember what. She clearly enjoyed inflicting pain. After that she had Kharla come in to clean my wounds. I thought that somehow I could get her to help me get a hold of the knife. But Kharla was acting like a robot, obeying Vernara’s commands without any emotion._

_Vernara must have been on some kind of stimulant. She seemed insatiable. She resumed doing what she wanted with me and, after a while, ordered Kharla to join in by cutting into my back with her knife. I thought this might be the opportunity to get the weapon into my hands. Completely sure of her control over her servant, Vernara didn’t care that I was whispering to Kharla to help me. This kind of thing went on until I finally managed to snap Kharla out of her hypnotized state or whatever it was. Please refer to Dr. Keller’s report on Kharla’s blood tests. Anyway, Kharla cut one of my hands free and slipped me the knife. I freed myself and killed Vernara. I had to kill two of her guards and incapacitate another during our escape. On the back way out of the Alkamade compound we found my weapons and tac vest. Kharla showed me the way to the stargate. I knocked out the watchman and we went through.”_

John knew perfectly well that his narrative left gaping holes. So be it. He had no intention of spelling out the humiliating ways he had been restrained and exactly how he had gotten hold of the knife.

The rest of the report flowed easily. After briefly backtracking to describe what he had learned about the layout of the Alkamade compound (it was practically a fortress), he listed the stargates they went through and reported the little he had learned about Kharla. He emphasized the point that he owed his life to her and that she definitely deserved any help they could provide to settle her into a new life.

He didn’t know what else to say to wrap up the report. Nothing remotely useful came to mind as a recommendation or conclusion. Seriously, what could he possibly say? Don’t turn down passes from rich creepy women? Find a way to hide a knife or other sharp weapon under your skin so you would be always armed, even after being stripped naked? Finally, in a stroke of rationality, he remembered to make some semi-astute observations about possible threats from the rest of the Alkamade family in case Woolsey’s threats turned out not to be a sufficient deterrent.

After pressing the stop button, he placed the recorder on his desk. He felt exhausted but he was afraid to close his eyes and take a nap. He needed to forge on to take care of things so that he could get back to what passed for normality in Atlantis. Gulping down some water, he pondered whether he should make a copy of the recording to give to Robinson. Could her listening to the recording (while he was somewhere else) count as his first mandatory session with the psychologist? Probably not.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: I "borrowed" the character of Dr. Eva Robinson from the SGA Legacy Series of books.

The days that Kharla had spent in Atlantis seemed like a story that happened to someone else, someone more deserving. While Sheppard fought for his life in the infirmary, she was assigned guest quarters and given the freedom to roam around Atlantis under the supervision of Dusty or, when Dusty had other duties, one of the other female soldiers. Rather than acting as the foreboding guards Kharla was accustomed to, these young women treated her like a long-lost, cherished cousin who had to be made to feel welcome in their home.

Each time Dusty introduced Kharla to another person, she made sure to mention that she had helped Sheppard escape from Khamala Prime. At that point, Kharla always tried to clarify where the credit was really due.

“Truly, it was Colonel Sheppard who saved my life.” She would say, reliving the memory of how Tantoff would have slit her throat without hesitation if Sheppard had not complied with Hobson’s order to drop the knife. Given the determination she had seen in his eyes, the colonel would have had a very good chance to overpower the two guards if he had been willing to risk her life. Instead, he put himself in a most vulnerable position, paying an unconscionable price to safeguard her life and wait for his next opportunity to overpower the two guards.

Thankfully unaware of her bitter thoughts, the other person inevitably answered with a remark of how that was what Colonel Sheppard did or, surprisingly often and especially if said person was a soldier, how he had also personally saved his or her life, sometimes more than once. Kharla enjoyed listening to their stories but never elaborated on her own. No one pressed her. The only one who had come close was Doctor Robinson during their daily private meeting, and she had done it in such a kind, indirect way that Kharla had almost revealed the truth. Fortunately when she had started formulating her thoughts, she remembered that this story also belonged to someone else.

Thus, she could not speak of these things that regularly haunted her nighttime hours. She understood Robinson’s reasoning that discussing such difficult experiences would help her sleep better and feel less shattered. Furthermore, Robinson’s reassurances that whatever she said would not be shared with anyone else sounded completely sincere. So she opened up a little. She talked to the kind doctor about other images that haunted her from that night in Vernara’s chamber—the sounds that the woman had made as she died, the sight of the three bleeding corpses and the overwhelming stench of death. But she absolutely could not say anything about what else had happened there, at least not until she spoke with Sheppard.

Robinson encouraged her to talk about everything. Her past, her present and her hopes for the future. Even though she was never completely relaxed about what she chose to reveal, Kharla enjoyed talking with the older woman. She had never had someone pay so much attention to her thoughts and be so willing to answer her questions. She had so many and, once she realized that she would not be rebuked for asking them, she showed little restrain in querying about all the marvelous things that intrigued and puzzled her. Robinson answered what she could and encouraged her to talk to others about matters she was not as well versed in. Noticing her keen interest in healing, she also suggested that Kharla might want to spend some time in the infirmary, helping the Lantean healers and learning along the way. 

“I can see from the smile on your face that you really like the idea.” Robinson said.

“Yes I do, but would I be allowed to do such a thing?”

“Before I promise anything, I will speak with Doctor Keller. As the Chief Medical Officer in charge of the Atlantis infirmary, it’s her decision. I will let you know tomorrow what she says.”

Keller readily agreed and Kharla found herself spending several hours a day in the infirmary. She was willing and eager to do anything, from changing the sheets to fetching items once she learned where things were stored. She especially liked to help Martini and Beckett because they were very willing to explain to her the functions of the many machines they used to evaluate and treat patients.

After the first two days, her life in Atlantis folded into a reassuring routine. Breakfast with Dusty and some of her comrades, a session with Robinson, several hours in the infirmary interrupted by a lunch intermission, then dinner, followed by some type of entertainment devised by Dusty, either a movie (filled with unimaginable things mixed with the commonalities of life) or a card game, and then the hardest part: nighttime by herself in her room (it was still hard to believe that there was such a place, even if it was temporary), trying to sleep between nightmares and worries about her future.

In an attempt to lull herself to sleep, she would review the new words and concepts that she had learned that day. Healing, the subject that she had previously thought she was close to mastering, had branched out into many different, previously unthinkable possibilities. Medicine, surgery, psychology, pharmacology, genetics, and so on—she liked the sound of these words rolling off her tongue. Everything seemed so interesting and each thing she learned generated more questions. The things that the Lanteans could do to heal sick and injured people were so much beyond the scope of what she had learned from Lagona. Sometimes these thoughts inspired her; other times they overwhelmed her as she realized her inadequacies.

“Kharla, love, don’t get discouraged by all these fancy toys,” Beckett told her when he noticed her frowning at the incredible amount of information displayed by the Ancient medical scanner. “What makes a good doctor or healer is your rapport with your patients, the healing knowledge ye have in your head and how ye manage to use this knowledge and what’s at hand to help them. Ye’re a fine healer.”

“I do not mean to be rude, but what do you know about my healing skills?” she asked. All that she had done so far was observe and ask interminable questions.

“I’ve seen your work. Even though some were ruined by those savages, your meticulous stitches on the Colonel’s arm and the makeshift bandages ye applied to his wrists, ankles and the worst of the bloody mess on his back ‘re a testament to your fine healing skills. The fact that ye managed to get him to stand still long enough for ye to do anything is a medical miracle by itself.”

Kharla ignored the attempt at humor. “My stitches and the bandages were not enough. He almost died.”

“Dear Lord that was not your fault. Insidious bacterial infections like that still kill many people, even those being treated at the finest medical facilities in my home world. Would you like me to show ye those slides again?”

“No thank you, I remember them well.” While initially interesting, she definitely did not want to take another look at the pictures of the tissue damage caused by what Beckett had graphically described as flesh eating bacteria. According to Keller’s analysis, the miniscule organism that had made Sheppard so ill was very similar to it.

“Listen to me, love.” His voice was firm but filled with kindness as he continued. “Ye did not shoot the Colonel with a filthy arrow, jab filthy fingers in his wounded arm or flog him with a filthy whip. That’s how he got infected by that nasty organism. Things would’ve been much worse if ye hadn’t tended to him so well. I’ve no doubt that he would’ve fallen ill much sooner and, most likely, wouldn’t have had the strength to successfully escape. Knowing the daft bugger, he would’ve gotten himself killed trying. The point is that your healing skills are something ye should be proud of. Understood?”

“Yes. Thank you, Doctor Beckett,” she said.

“Good. Now how about ye tell me about that moss ye used to soothe the colonel’s injuries. It seems to have some impressive analgesic and antiseptic properties. I’d love to get my hands on some. I wonder if it grows in New Athos.”

“It is quite possible, from what I have learned flandar is very common on many planets. I have found it on Jenev and Khamala Prime,” she said.

As the conversation progressed, she learned the meaning of those two new words, analgesic and antiseptic, and realized that there were things that she could teach the Lantean doctors. At her brief mention of other healing plants and flowers, Beckett enthusiastically erupted with questions, requests for her to draw pictures to accompany her descriptions and ideas for other people who might be interested in this information. The word botany was soon added to her list of favorites. 

Despite her regular presence in the infirmary, Kharla never saw Sheppard because he remained sequestered in a private room and was tended by a select handful of people. When Martini described to her the machines that were being used to keep him alive, it amazed her that he had not died. If he had been under her or Lagona’s care, he certainly would have. Three days after her arrival in Atlantis, she and everyone else were very relieved to hear that he had started to recover.

On the fifth day of her stay in Atlantis, when she came back to the infirmary after her session with Robinson, Kharla heard that Sheppard had been finally released from the infirmary. Now that he was feeling better she hoped to get a chance to speak with him. She decided that at lunch, she would ask Dusty about the best way to approach Sheppard. Being under his command, surely she would be familiar with the proper protocol to arrange a meeting.

For the present, she focused on the fascinating images shown on the monitor while Martini explained their significance. They were scanning the right leg of a soldier who had injured himself in a fall. Lucky for the young man it was a clean break that could be easily realigned.

“How’s he doing?” a familiar male voice said behind her.

“Colonel Sheppard, should you really be walking around instead of resting in your quarters?” said Martini.

Sheppard flashed her an appeasing smile. “Don’t worry Doc; I already took my first nap of the day. I’m just stretching my legs a bit.” He approached the bed. The prone soldier made a motion to sit up. Sheppard waved him down and addressed him in an easy tone. “At ease, corporal. What happened to you?”

While Corporal Jimenez answered the question and Martini described the extent of his injury, Kharla evaluated Sheppard with a clinical eye. His face looked a little gaunt but at least his skin color was much improved from the gray paleness tinged by the flush of fever that he had worn when they first arrived in Atlantis. His right arm rested in a sturdy sling and bandages around his wrists were visible under the cuffs of his dark shirt, which was not tucked into his loose grey trousers. She had been in Atlantis for long enough to recognize that this was not their standard military attire. In her assessment, while he was no longer critically ill, he definitely required several days to rest and recuperate. As she finished her survey, she noticed that he had turned his attention to her.

“Hello Kharla. I heard that you are helping out in the infirmary. That’s really nice of you.”

“It is I who is very grateful that Doctor Martini and her colleagues are allowing me to pester them with questions. And I am very glad to see that you are feeling better, Colonel.” She did not feel comfortable calling him John in front of other people. These were very different circumstance from when he asked her to address him in such an informal way. There it had been just the two of them joined by the common purpose of escaping Khamala Prime; here he was the military commander of a very large contingent of troops and civilians. Even though no one had said anything to her, she knew her place.

“Thanks, Kharla. I’d like to talk to you if you have time and the good Doctor Martini can spare you.” He said.

Kharla was glad to finally have the opportunity to speak with him. Martini raised no objections. They left the infirmary after Sheppard exchanged a few more pleasantries with the doctor and Jimenez.

“I know of a quiet place where we could talk. It’s not too far,” he said.

He led her down a short hallway into a transporter. In less than the blink of an eye, the transporter released them into another corridor. Sheppard waved his hand next to the closest doorway. The door slid open, revealing a chamber sparsely furnished with two cushioned seats and a couch, all aligned to face a wide floor-to-ceiling window. From the view, Kharla realized that they were close to the top of one of the many towers in Atlantis. Sheppard waited for her to enter the room first before he followed her in. The door slid shut quietly behind him and the lights in the room turned on to a comfortable intensity. Wondrous—she still had not become accustomed to the way the city silently responded to its inhabitants and to some, like Sheppard, more than others as it had been explained to her by Beckett.

“Pretty view, isn’t it?” Sheppard sat on one of the chairs and beckoned with his hand for her to sit on the couch next to him. “This is one of my favorite spots when I need some space to think and it’s too cold to go outside.”

“It is lovely,” she said. The expression about space was unfamiliar but Kharla understood what he meant. She used to have such a place when she lived with Lagona. In the Alkamade household, the only refuge was within her own head.

They sat quietly for a while, admiring the view and throwing furtive glances at each other. She rubbed her hands nervously. She had been thinking about this conversation for days without settling on a way to broach the concerns that were foremost in her mind. Sheppard mumbled something under his breath. She could not quite grasp the meaning of his words; it sounded as if he was berating himself.

He took a slow breath and began to speak. “I’ve been having nightmares about, um, about what went on with Vernara and I’ve only been conscious for little more than a day.” He turned his gaze away from the window to look at her before continuing. “How are you doing, Kharla?”

She was glad that he had taken the initiative to start. “Nighttime is difficult. I cannot get certain images out of my mind. Their bodies. I have tended to the dying and the dead before but those experiences had never affected me so deeply.”

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that. Violent death is ugly even when there is no other choice because it’s either you or them.”

“I am glad that it was them and I thank you again for what you did. I owe you my life,” she said.

“Kharla, I owe you my life too. I wouldn’t have had a chance to do anything if you hadn’t cut my hand free. You risked your life by helping me.”

“I had no choice. She had to be stopped. No one should be treated like you were … like I was.”

While she tossed and turned in her bed in between fitful sleep periods and nightmares, Kharla had thought about this a great deal. She had imagined scenarios where she had done nothing to stop Vernara. In one scenario, she had never snapped out of Vernara’s control of her body. That one was the easiest to bear because she would have had no choice but to comply during the events of that night. The question that troubled her was whether she would have done anything once the effects of Vernara’ control wore off. Inevitably she would have noticed the signs on her own body that something horrible had happened to her or when next she would have been asked to tend to Sheppard, he would have recoiled from her and said something that would have made her remember the enormity of what had transpired. The prospect that she might have done nothing terrified her more than the possibility that she would have mustered the courage to help herself and Sheppard, if it was not too late for him.

The other scenario was even more horrifying to contemplate because it was so much more conceivable. Through Sheppard’s pleading, she had snapped out of Vernara’s control—that was an immutable fact—but what if she had laid there inert, like an object to be used, too frightened and subjugated to react? Would she had been able to live with herself, fulfilling her duties, tending to Sheppard and, once Vernara tired of him, to her next victim? Would Vernara have continued using her that way? Would her own mind and character have eventually become so broken until there was nothing left of herself except a tenuous shadow that mechanically obeyed her mistress’ commands? Another thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. What if she had failed to reach the knife and cut Sheppard’s hand free? What if Vernara had caught her with the knife in her hand?

Sheppard’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I know it’s hard, but try to stop torturing yourself by questioning your actions and decisions. What’s done can’t be changed and you have to find a way to move on.”

As she looked into his eyes, it was clear that he had not read her mind, he was just speaking from his own experience. This was a man who must have played the “what if” game numerous times in his life.

“Doctor Robinson said something very similar to me when we met earlier today,” she said.

“Well, you should listen to her. She’s a very wise lady.” His charming, slightly crocked grin vanished and his eyes darkened as continued. “Speaking of things that we can’t change, Vernara used your body to hurt me and mine to hurt you. Right?”

“Yes, but I …”

He did not allow her to finish her answer. “I have been wracking my brains about this and I can’t think of anything either one of us could have done differently. I hope that you aren’t still blaming yourself for the cuts in my back and the other stuff. It wasn’t you. Vernara used powerful drugs to control you. You didn’t ask for any of it. It wasn’t your fault.”

Sheppard’s manner and voice exuded sincerity. He had told her this before when they were on the planet with the waterfall. Kharla had not believed him then because he was obviously feverish and too focused on their escape to have really thought through about what had transpired between them. She expected that he would not feel the same way once he had the opportunity to reconsider the events with a clear head. As an accomplice in his torture, he should hate her or at least despise her for having been so weak.

“I should have been strong enough to resist her,” she said.

She was surprised to see Sheppard’s eyes clear to a lighter shade of green and his lips broke into a smile again. “I knew you were going to say that,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because that’s exactly the way I would think in the same circumstances.”

Kharla started feeling irritated. She did not like people to presume that they knew how she thought or felt. Her mother used to say that and that had annoyed her very much. Her voice rose as she said, “How do you know what you would think in my situation? Did someone ever take control of your body and made you do evil things to other people against your will?”

“Yes, and more than once,” he said. At her look of disbelief, he continued. “It’s true. A few years back, an ancient warrior took over my body and shoved me to a far corner of my head. I fought him every step of the way and I yelled for him to stop. It didn’t do me any good; he used my own hands and knowledge of Atlantis to wound some of my own soldiers, hurt and deceive one very close friend and try to kill my commander. Another time a machine made me think that I was reliving my past. I thought that my teammates were my enemies. I shot my best friend.”

Kharla looked at him suspiciously. He met her scrutiny without wavering. The anecdotes sounded too farfetched to be a falsehood. “Did your friend die?”

“No, but that was sheer luck. I could’ve easily killed him.” As he rubbed his chin, she noticed that he had lost some of the vitality he displayed when they left the infirmary. He should not have dragged himself out of bed to talk to her. “They’re both long stories. The point I’m trying to make is that I know a lot about beating myself up for stuff I couldn’t control. After a while, it’s just pointless and self-destructive. You won’t believe how long it’s taken me to figure this out.”

“I appreciate what you are saying, but it is difficult to accept.”

“Believe me, I know.” He bit his lip as if he unsure on how to proceed. He had not acted this hesitant earlier in the conversation. “Look, here is my bit to get over some of my own guilt. So here it goes: I would have done anything to stop Vernara from using me to … to violate you, but by the time I realized her intentions, it was too damn late. I am just so sorry, so deeply and uselessly sorry.”

Before he turned away to look back at the window, Kharla noticed that his eyes glistened with moisture. This shame that he felt should not be his. The realization of what Robinson, Teyla and Sheppard had been trying to tell her finally sunk in. The stomach churning guilt that both of them were feeling was unfounded. Vernara’s madness had forced them into an impossibly cruel predicament and while they had both suffered (Sheppard so much more than she), they had managed to work together and set themselves free. The culprits had been punished by a well-deserved death and continuing to feel guilty would be a win for Vernara. They needed to absolve each other; no one else could do it for them.

Kharla lightly pulled on his shirt sleeve to get his attention, “Please listen, John. As you just tried to convince me to not feel guilty, I will try to convince you. You did not do anything to hurt me; Vernara did. Do not blame yourself. You know this is true because what you said to me applies to you too. Correct?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

She had the suspicion that he had orchestrated this entire exchange to give her the chance to catch him in his own argument. What better way to get his point across? Strangely though, this did not make her angry because everything he had shared with her had been utterly sincere. Given that she suspected that he was not the type of person that liked to discuss his emotions with others, she felt honored that he had trusted her enough to be so open with her.

He shifted in his seat and she caught a fleeting grimace on his features. “Are you in pain? You should go back to your quarters and rest some more.”

“You healers and doctors are all alike, wanting me to sleep all day. I’m fine. I just have to move more slowly than I’m used to.” His tone betrayed more amusement than exasperation.

Kharla was not persuaded. “You were very ill just a few days ago and would have died if not for your doctors’ potent medicines and surgical skills. You must take of yourself or you will impede your recovery.”

Sheppard sighed, “Okay, I’ll go back to bed soon. There are just a couple more things I wanted to tell you. In my report to Mister Woolsey I didn’t give details about how you managed to give me the knife and so on. He doesn’t need to know and I’m sure that he does not want to know.”

“Rest assured that I did not say anything very specific either when I described the events to Doctor Robinson and Teyla. I would never speak of such personal things.”

“I know you didn’t and I really appreciate that. The thing is that I don’t want to keep secrets from Teyla. That’s not the kind of relationship I want to have with her. I am also going to have to talk to Robinson a lot. She has to clear me for duty before I can get back to doing my job. These chats are not something I’m looking forward to, but even I have to admit that I need them.”

“Talking with her has already helped me,” Kharla said.

“But what you have talked to her about is not quite enough. Is it?” he asked.

She barely hesitated before answering, “No, it’s not.”

“Okay, so what I’m trying to say is that I’ll be telling her probably everything and you shouldn’t hold back anything for my sake. Neither of us needs to hide anything from Robinson. She is not going to judge us or report our secrets.”

“Doctor Robinson already reassured me that all matters discussed with her are kept secret unless she believes there is a danger to others.”

“That’s the truth,” he said. “Now I’m good to go. Unless you have other stuff on your mind?”

Kharla did have other questions but he had answered her most pressing ones. The other matters could wait. It was time to get this stubborn and immensely likable man back to his room before he toppled over from exhaustion.

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acknowledgements: Thanks again to my Beta, Amycat8733. Don’t blame her for my mistakes, she hasn’t even seen my latest edits.
> 
> Warnings: This chapter contains potentially disturbing sexual/violent content and bad language.

Teyla walked briskly down the corridor to return to John’s quarters. She was late picking him up to go to lunch. To expedite things, Amelia and Ronon had graciously agreed to fetch Torren from Miko’s care and meet them in the mess room.

The meeting with Woolsey had taken longer than expected. After it ended, she became involved in Major Lorne’s post-mission debrief and what Woolsey called a “brain storming session” to strategize on their number one priority: finding Rodney. She dreaded telling John that they still had no good leads on their friend’s location and that fears were mounting regarding what the Wraith planned to do with Rodney’s intimate knowledge of Atlantis’ security and weapon systems.

Perhaps she could postpone giving him the news for a while longer. When she had left him sitting in his lazy chair, he looked physically and emotionally exhausted, despite the upbeat veneer he displayed. She did not want to add to his already inhumanly heavy burden. She resolved to avoid the topic. However, if he asked, she would have to tell him the truth. There were no lies between them.

She mused that if John had managed to get through his recording without torturing himself too much (if that was even possible), he might have even followed Carson’s orders to get more rest. She knew that most of this was what her Earth friends called wishful thinking. So be it. Through all the travails she encountered in her life, she always strove to maintain her optimism. Sometimes it had been realistic, sometimes it had not. The important thing was to have hope; when living in the shadows of the Wraith, there was no reason to live without hope.

On the assumption that John was asleep, she entered his quarters without ringing the door chime. Just a few weeks earlier, they had taken a big step in their relationship by programing the entrances to their respective quarters to give unencumbered access to each other. She had been very pleased when John had made the suggestion.

The half-drawn shades on the windows allowed in a fair amount of light. This time her wish had come true. John lay asleep on the bed, hidden from the chest down by the covers. The sweatpants he had worn in the morning were crumpled on the floor on top of his shoes. Something that John usually did not do, no matter how much Rodney teased him about how the military had brainwashed him into being unnaturally neat. He wore the sling as instructed and his shirt, most likely because it was difficult for him to take it off without assistance. She checked his bed stand for the pills she had left there and was reassured to see that he had taken his pain medication.

His breathing was slow and steady, and there were no pain lines around his eyes and mouth. Except for a few grey hairs in his side burns, he looked much younger than his age. This relaxed, youthful appearance reminded her of the first time she met him in Athos, when he had eagerly accepted her invitation to join her for tea.

He was sleeping so soundly that she did not have the heart to wake him up. Lunch could wait, she decided. He would eat more heartily if he was well rested. She moved quietly through the room to reach the desk. As she located a pen and the stack of note paper, post-it notes they were called, she noticed that the digital recorder Woolsey had given to John was attached to his computer. He must have finished the report and decided to transmit it electronically instead of handing in the device. Trying not to think about what John might have said in the report, she penned a brief note and left it on the night table, in case he woke up before she returned.

A few minutes later, she encountered Robinson while waiting in line at the mess hall for the hot food item service. They were serving one of her Earth favorites, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Hello, Teyla,” Robinson said.

“Greetings Eva, I see that we favor the same foods today.”

“It’s an old childhood favorite of mine. Not as good as my mother used to make but it still brings back fond memories.” Robinson was looking around, clearly searching for someone. “Do you know if Colonel Sheppard already had lunch? I don’t see him here.”

“We were going to partake of the midday meal together but he was sleeping so deeply that I decided not to wake him.”

“Oh, we were scheduled to meet in half an hour.”

“I did not know that,” Teyla said, puzzled why John had not told her about this appointment.

“We arranged it just a short while ago when we spoke on the comm. Don’t worry about it, we’ll reschedule. Letting him sleep when he can is a very good idea.”

Teyla expected to hear from John at any moment during lunch. Instead, her comm stayed silent. Once they were done with the meal, she had Torren help her assemble a tray of food to bring back to John’s room. Thinking that he would prefer to avoid the challenge of eating soup left handed, she chose a turkey sandwich, fruit and a protein bar. Torren enthusiastically picked two large cookies. Teyla saw no reason to reject his choices since Carson had emphasized the need for John to eat extra calories. Between his captivity and his sickness, he had missed far too many meals. She left Torren under Ronon’s care and went back to John’s quarters.

As noiselessly as possible, she slipped inside the room and placed the tray on the desk. John did not seem to have moved much from his previous sleeping position. Afraid to startle him awake, she did not succumb to the desire to slip in bed with him to nestle against his warm, hard body. Instead, she made herself comfortable on his lazy chair and waited for him to wake up. Soon enough, exhausted from lying awake the previous night worrying about so many things, she lost the battle against her heavy eyelids and began to drift off.

“Crap. I missed my appointment with Robinson,” John’s hoarse voice startled her awake. He was glaring at the clock.

“It is alright, John. I told her you were still sleeping. She understands completely and is happy to reschedule.” She strode across the room and picked up his trousers from the floor. “When I came to get you for lunch, you were sleeping so soundly that I decided not to wake you.”

“Oh, okay. I didn’t think that I would sleep this long.” John sat up cautiously and swung his legs over to the side, planting his feet on the floor. He hunched over a little and scrubbed his eyes before combing his fingers through his hair, as if that could do much to tame it.

“Are you in pain?”

“No, I’m really groggy. Long naps are the worst,” he said. His eyes were puffy from sleep but the light in them seemed livelier than it had been in the morning.

She handed him his trousers. He slung them over his shoulder and pulled the blankets off his lower body. She offered her hand to help him stand. He took it. As a precaution, she placed her other hand behind his elbow. She barely had to exert any force to help him stand up, but then she had to brace him when he began to sway to the side. To help support him, she released his hand and placed her hand on his hip, careful not to crush his injured arm between their bodies.

“Wow, that was unexpected,” he said as he moved his hand to her shoulder to help steady himself.

“Do you need to sit down?”

“No, no, I just got a little dizzy. I’m okay now.”

“You must eat. I brought you lunch. Torren picked the dessert.”

“Great. I’ll be right back,” he headed to the bathroom, muttering. “God, I really need to take a shower.”

“After you eat,” she insisted.

As she watched him walk with a reassuringly steady gait, she noticed that he was wearing gray undergarments instead of the usual black ones that she liked so much. From what she saw peeking from under the flaps of his shirt, these did not look too bad either. She enjoyed the view of his long, naked legs—so pleasantly lean and muscular. She frowned when she noticed that while finally discolored to a sickly yellow shade, the large bruises behind his thighs persisted as a glaring reminder of his abuse.

When he exited the bathroom, she felt a little disappointed that he had put on the trousers. Catching herself almost mentally undressing him, she redirected her glance back up to his face. For all she knew, this type of scrutiny, which he would have normally accepted with a smile and a teasing comment, might now make him terribly uncomfortable.

“You should tell Carson about this dizzy spell,” she said.

“It’s nothing,” he said, predictably. Without uttering a single word, she looked at him in disbelief. He corrected himself, “Okay, I will.”

He sat at the desk and looked very pleased at the sight of the food. She sat next to him, moving her chair closer so that their knees touched.

While he ate, she did most of the talking, answering his questions about Torren and other routine things happening in Atlantis. He did not ask about Rodney and she did not bring it up. She suspected that Ronon had already briefed him on their latest, dismally negative findings.

After practically inhaling the sandwich, he slowed down, alternating a bite of the protein bar with a spoonful of fruit. In a break between them, he told her that he had talked to Kharla and had tried to assuage her guilt. It amused her to hear John call someone else stubborn (pig headed, he actually said, but she knew what that meant) for feeling responsible for things they had no control over.

Teyla was pleased to see John eating so heartily. In no time, all that was left were the two cookies.

“How about we share?” he said, offering her one.

“Thank you,” she said. Instead of taking the cookie from his hand, she took his wrist and moved it closer to her mouth then she leaned forward and took a bite. His lips broke into that crooked smile she liked so much and had not seen enough of lately. She picked up the other cookie and offered it to him.

Mischief in his eyes, he took a bite in the same fashion. Lips up turned in foolish grins, they fed each other, chewing with full cheeks and looking deeply into one another’s eyes, like love struck adolescents. Seeing John’s playful side rise up, stirred something in her heart and other parts. Knowing that this was not the time for such things, she squelched the rising desire to drag him to his bed and lick the chocolate smears and cookie crumbs off his lips.

Once they were done with the cookies, he wiped his mouth with the napkin and, after turning it to a clean corner, he gently dabbed it at her lips. He leaned toward her, his eyes full of longing. For a moment she thought that he would kiss her, instead he lightly touched her forehead with his and whispered a practically inaudible thanks before pulling away. She loved the fact that he had assimilated so well her Athosian greeting, but parts of her bemoaned the loss of another kiss opportunity—lips were much more sensitive and needy than foreheads. As they shared his glass of water, she came to the realization that he had come close and then avoided kissing her multiple times since returning from his ordeal. This was definitely not a coincidence.

“I hate to ruin the moment, but I want to talk to you about what happened,” he said.

A surge of anxiety fluttering in her stomach, she began to sweep up the crumbs from the desk. “Very well. Just give me a moment to tidy up.”

She stacked the dishes back on the tray and set it aside. Noticing the way he was rubbing the elbow bent in the sling, she convinced him to sit in the comfortable chair so that he could stretch out his injured arm on the arm rest. She helped him out of the sling before she refilled his glass with water and placed it on the nearest window sill. Then, she moved one of the desk chairs so that she could be close enough to touch him or hold his hand while sitting facing him.

Visibly tense, he clenched and unclenched his jaw. “This is hard,” he said.

She took his hand and squeezed it gently. “Do you remember when we talked about what happened on M1B-129 when that Wraith device made you think that I was your friend, Captain Holland, and that you were fighting back in that desert place in your home world?”*

“Yes,” he said.

“I told you that you had said nothing that made me think badly of you.” She cupped his jawline with her hand and caressed him.

“I will never forget that,” he said, the intense look in eyes radiating his feelings for her. He might not usually overwhelm her with words, but he had other very effective ways of communicating.

She reciprocated the look while she continued with her message. “Even though so far I have heard only a brief account of what happened on Khamala Prime, I am certain that there is nothing that you will tell me that would make me change my mind and make me think ill of you. You continue to be _my fixed star_. Do not forget that, John.”

“Okay, but I really don’t know what I have done to deserve you.” He emphasized the point by taking her hand and planting a soft kiss on her knuckles. She had seen this elegant gesture in _The Prince Bride_ , an amusingly costumed Earth movie that John introduced her to a few years back. Since then, they had seen that movie numerous times; Ronon was extremely fond of it, Rodney not so much.

John began his account with the snippets of memories he recalled after the arrow pierced his arm. As he described waking up, nearly naked and securely tied to Vernara’s massive bed, his eyes shifted to the bandage around his wrist. A flush of red blossomed on his cheeks while he persevered in a steady voice.

“I tried to reason with her and she pulled her knife out of her leg holster and carved up my arm,” he pointed to his left arm. “She actually said something about always wanting to flay someone alive. She sounded like a cartoon villain from a really bad horror movie. After the second time she cut me, I realized that I really needed to watch what I said so as not to piss her off too much. I wanted to get my hands on that knife but the ropes were too tight. I couldn’t stop her from …uhm, from touching me and stripping me naked. She ...  you know maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Why?”

Scratching the back of his head, John sighed. “I don’t know how to describe the crap that happened.”

Teyla took hold of his hand. “Use whatever words you know. Do not worry about using crude language. Through my dealings with your Marines, I have become quite familiar with many colorful Earth terms.”

“Really? Who speaks to you like that? I’m going to kick their asses.”

“It is nothing like that. I just overhear some things and Ronon likes to discuss with me all the new phrases he picks up.”

“I didn’t know Ronon was such a linguist,” John said, a thin smile making a fleeting appearance.

Teyla smiled back, some of her own tension easing up, temporarily. “I continue to enrich my vocabulary of your colloquialisms and other cruder forms of jargon through chats with my female friends from your world and readings of some of your literature.”

She purposely said literature instead of novels to give him the chance to tease her about the types of books she read. He did not pick up the bait.

Instead, he put his hand up in mock surrender. “Okay, fine, I’ll go on.”

Soon enough, it became increasingly uncomfortable for her to listen and not react to what he was saying. She did not want John to misunderstand her feelings of anger and revulsion at his torturer, for pity for him. She fixed a calm expression on her face and stopped the compulsion to grind her teeth. Carson’s generalized explanation for how a man could be forced to respond to unwanted stimulation had definitely not been adequate preparation for hearing the reality. Most likely nothing would have prepared her for this conversation.

As John haltingly described his experience, Teyla could not stop herself from imagining what it must have been like for him to be immobilized, arms and legs stretched out exposing his most vulnerable areas to the attention of this cruel stranger—the fear and humiliation he must have felt. This must have quickly evolved to helpless anger as Vernara bound his sex within leather rings and penetrated him with an object. She was glad that he had the fortitude to cull his outrage and bide his time by acting as passive as he could—she had only an inkling of the price his pride had paid for it.

“She also had some kind of oil that she … rubbed.” At hearing this detail, her composure must have visibly wavered because John squeezed her hand and said, “Are you okay, Teyla?”

His look of concern for her almost broke her. But no, she would not let herself weep. Right now, she needed to be strong for him not the other way around. “I am fine, John. Please continue.”

“Okay,” he said, punctuating each syllable to make it clear that he did not believe her. “I don’t know what was worse: what Vernara was doing or all the ridiculous things she was saying. I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me, but that didn’t always work. If she would have just shut up, it would have still been really bad, but I dunno maybe less .... All I’m saying is that if you are going to rape someone, at least you should do it quickly and silently.”

“Of course,” she agreed, playing her part to lighten things up while he was preparing to tell the worse parts of his experiences.

All levity gone, he said, “She rap… she fucked me. And when she got herself off, I hoped that she was done but she wasn’t. She made me …. Oh crap, I can’t say it.” John let go of her hand to wipe at his face.

Teyla shifted her seat even closer to him. She reached over to touch his shoulder. “It is alright, John, you can say anything.”

He looked at her, tired eyes glistening. “She threatened to cut off a finger if I didn’t suck her tits. So I did.” He flinched and searched her face, as if expecting her to get angry at him.

“You had no choice,” she said.

“No, you see, I did have a choice. I couldn’t stop her from making me as stiff as a baseball bat but I could have refused this. If she’d cut my finger off, she might have lost her mood. At least she would have had to interrupt her activities to get someone to stop the bleeding or something. I might have had a chance to ..."

She broke the promise to herself not to interrupt him. “John, please. How can you possibly believe that? You would have been incapacitated and she might have enjoyed that even more. Do not even think of such things. It seems to me that when you were lying there physically helpless, you were thinking much more rationally than you are now. This is perfectly normal.” She wanted to reason with him and not get angry. It was difficult. “I cannot even imagine how torturous this is for you but please do not—how do you say it?—second guess yourself. Did you not tell Kharla this very same thing earlier today?”

“Yes, I did. I’m a hypocrite, that’s a fact,” he said. “While I did what she wanted, she fucked me again,” he paused and drank some water. The bobbing of his Adam’s apple brought attention to the fading scratches and bite marks on his neck. “When she was done, she had her guards take me to a prison cell.”

Teyla was certain that he was omitting telling her something that was even more upsetting to him. She did not know how far to press him. Perhaps there were some things that might be more harmful to him if he shared with her instead of keeping them to himself. Or maybe some things would just take longer to come out.

Earlier in the day, she had asked Eva for suggestions on how to help John deal with this latest traumatizing experience. Eva said that she could not go into specifics, but what she had seen in John’s file made her believe that he had built strong mechanisms to deal with traumas suffered during imprisonment and war. Her impression was that he was good at compartmentalizing things so as not to affect his behavior around others, especially those under and above his command level. Teyla agreed that John excelled at this. Eva ventured that in private John probably suffered from nightmares and guilt about things he thought he should have controlled. What made this newest torturous experience different was the sexual component and the fact that he was in an intimate relationship. No matter how strong willed a person is, Eva warned, the barriers between compartments are much more difficult to maintain with someone one is emotionally and physically tied to. In these circumstances, vulnerabilities surface at the most unexpected and unwanted moments.

While his cheeks remained flushed, the rest of his face paled as he continued talking. Teyla decided not to interrupt his flow. This was not the time to push him, he needed to let go at the level he was willing to reach at this point in his emotional recovery.

He described how he was tied up and blindfolded. He had no idea where they were taking him until the guards pushed him inside a prison cell and released the bindings. He said that the guards were big and obnoxious, and that Vernara had threatened them with a whipping if they played with him. Without elaborating, he described them as heavy handed with him but too scared of Vernara to hurt him much.

John’s account of his first encounter with Kharla proved her theory that from the start he had tagged her as a victim to be helped. Hearing the relief in his voice while he described the first human on Khamala Prime who had talked to him like a person and not treated him like an object made her very grateful for their meeting. Maybe, finding Kharla had cemented John’s resolve to keep his fighting spirit in check until he had a realistic opportunity to escape. From her too numerous life experiences, she knew that it was always a good distraction from one’s own troubles to have to worry about someone else.

John unsuccessfully attempted to frame in a humorous note his tale of when he found out from Kharla that the meal he had eaten was laced with a substance that would give him intestinal troubles. To Teyla, this was another of a lengthening list of unspeakable cruelties.

“I slept a bit and then I got sick. Soon after that the guards came back, tied, blind folded and gagged me. They took me to a room where they shackled me to restraints. Servants washed and sort of dressed me in a ridiculous get up. They were scared to death of Vernara, but they tried to limit my humiliation. The guards then took me to back to Vernara’s room, strung me up in a kneeling position at the foot of her bed. My only consolation was that they left in a hurry. Vernara took her own sweet time undressing me and prepping me. I think she was drinking something to fortify her.”

He interrupted his account to take another sip of water. She pondered what he meant by “prepping me” and then she realized that he was referring to how Vernara got his sex ready for her attentions.

“This time she wanted me to …,” Abruptly, he brought a hand to his mouth and stood up. He rushed to the bathroom. The door slid shut behind him.

She followed and waited quietly outside, until she could no longer contain her anxiety. “John, are you feeling sick? Please let me in.”

“False alarm, I’m okay. I’ll be there in a sec,” despite the muffling caused by the closed door, she heard the false cheerfulness in his voice.

He came out a soon enough, clutching his right arm against his body because he had not had a chance to put it back in the sling. Without saying anything, she placed her hands around his neck and enfolded him in a light embrace. Her ear pressed to his chest, she listened to the thumping of his heart. His chin rested lightly on the top of her hair. She heard him take deep breaths.

“Just say it, John,” she said. “Whatever it is, it is better for you to say it than to keep it within you. Trust me.”

He lowered his head and whispered in her ear, “She made me use my mouth on her…. twice. I didn’t even argue, I just did it. I wanted to get it over with. I didn’t see another way. I’m so sorry.”

Teyla held him and caressed his arm while she processed the information. She did not have much experience with the oral pleasures. One of her first but short-lived lovers (literally, he was culled so long ago) had experimented with that; he had liked the effect it had on her and she enjoyed it too. Kanaan had never ventured in that direction. He was patient, versatile with his hands and had great endurance, but not much imagination. Not that long ago, John had made sultry suggestions about the things he would like to do with her, but they had yet to have the time and privacy to put his ideas into action.

Now, not only did John feel profoundly ashamed for having yielded to Vernara’s command, he also felt compelled to apologize to her—as if in acquiescing to the commands of an armed, depraved woman, he had betrayed her. This must be why he was avoiding kissing her on the mouth. Undoubtedly, repeating the mantra that he had done the right thing given the circumstances would not send the message forcefully enough to breach the wall of guilt that seemed to be suffocating him. It was time for action rather than words.

She loosened the embrace and tilted her head up to look him in the face. He had closed his eyes, the usual open window to his emotions, but everything else about him screamed of the pain he was in. She touched the tip of her index finger to his soft lips. His eyes snapped open in surprise. Hand cupping the back of his neck, she nudged him down. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him gently, but persistently with the lips only, brushing against them and taking small nibbles and playful pulls at his lower lip. He shuddered but did not pull away. His breath smelled fresh and peppery from the toothpaste he had just used. She repressed the impulse to breach his mouth with her tongue; that would have been too much, too soon. As she continued with her light kisses, he seemed to melt toward her, the tension in his body loosening a fraction.

Another nibble and he sighed in pleasure. She released his lips and brushed her cheek against his. She liked the feel of the light stubble. “You have nothing to be sorry for, John. Do not apologize for what you had to do against your will to stay alive and well enough to escape. I am glad that you made these choices instead of refusing her. I truly am.”

“Yeah, she was so pleased with my cooperation that she whipped me. I hate to imagine what she would have done if she’d been really mad at me.” This time, there was a touch of real humor in his tone.

“It would have been much worse,” Teyla said.

Holding his hand, she led him back to the lazy chair. Instead of leaning back and pulling up on the foot rest, he perched on the edge of the seat. Not letting go of him, she took her seat.

He continued with his account. “Vernara ordered her guards to come in and fit a weird harness on me. I thought about resisting, I really did, but with my hands and ankles tied I had no chance.”

“You did the right thing,” she said.

“They immobilized me in an even more humiliating position, hooking me up to a swing contraption attached to the bed posts. Kharla came in acting like a robot; she cleaned my wounds and gave me a fruit drink that turned out to be laced with an arousal drug.” His monotone voice became more animated when the continued. “Teyla, you read Keller’s report about the drugs in Kharla’s blood and you understand that she had no control over her actions?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. Her mind was focused on trying to conceptualize what this contraption might have been. She had no idea, but she did not want to burden him with such cruel questions. The point was for him to begin unburdening himself from the emotional impact of his torture and not to explain the mechanics of what happened.

“Keep that in mind,” he said. “I tried to talk to Kharla to snap her out of her trance or whatever. She didn’t respond. Vernara seemed to enjoy hearing my pathetic attempts at reaching Kharla. Needless to say, the sadistic bitch played with me some more. Then she ordered Kharla to carve up my back with her knife and things got very fuzzy for a while.”

He cleared his throat repeatedly. Teyla handed him the glass of water.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Are you all right? You do not have to finish now,” she said.

“I’m fine and I really do have to finish this because the worse part, the part I really need to tell you, is what happened next,” he paused for a long time. When she thought that he had finally decided to stop his story, he resumed speaking. “She blindfolded me again. Unable to see what they were up to, I felt this deep sense of dread sinking to the pit of my stomach, worse than anything before. I kept on whispering to Kharla until Vernara gagged me again. Vernara talked and I could hear them move around the room. And then … and then she pulled the blindfold off and I saw Kharla sprawled … naked … in front of me, the way Vernara had been before. Oh God, Teyla. I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

The halting words and the look of panic in his eyes jolted through Teyla’s gut. Realizing what must have happened next, she gasped in shock. He bolted from his chair and strode to face the other window. She scrambled off her seat to follow him, inserting herself in the small space between him and the window pane. She draped his left arm over her shoulder and wrapped her own arms around his waist. He let her maneuver him. That was a good sign.

He continued. “I was caught between them. Vernara pushed, insanely strong, and Kharla obediently pulled. I tried to resist but I had no leverage.” Despite their proximity, she could barely hear John’s next words. “While Vernara raped me with a strap-on dildo, I raped Kharla.”

Glad that with her face flush against his chest, he could not see the tears slipping down her cheeks, she said, “No, John. It was not you. Vernara raped both of you.”

His voice filled with bitterness, he said “I know, but it doesn’t feel that way.” But when he continued to speak, the tone eased up slightly. “That’s when Kharla finally snapped out of it. The one good thing is that we were finally close enough for her to cut one of my hands free and hand me the knife. That marked Vernara’s end.”

Teyla peered up at John. He looked a little calmer than a few minutes before. “It is fitting that she was defeated by her cruelest act.”

“Yeah, she was too distracted to notice anything until it was too late.”

  **  
**

**Footnote**

*The scene and the quote that Teyla mentions are from Jo Graham & Amy Grisworld's _Stargate Atlantis: The Lost_. Book two of the _Legacy Series_. Pages 100-101.

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Please keep in mind that I have no background in psychology, psychiatry, counseling, medicine and all the other serious stuff I’m writing about. Let me know if you find any huge mistakes.
> 
> Acknowledgements: Thanks to my wonderful, supportive and speedy Beta, Amycat8733. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: The SGA world and its characters (including Dr. Eva Robinson) are not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit. 
> 
> Warnings: Language and non-con references.

Eva listened to Sheppard’s mission report again. He droned on in a steady emotionless monotone; she heard not even a smidgen of his trademark easy-going drawl. His voice did not break once, not even where he obviously took a break, probably because he was either unsure how to explain what happened next or too upset by the memory of it to continue. Most likely both, she guessed.

This was her third time hearing the recording and reviewing her copious notes from the first two times. She had also read and re-read Beckett and Keller’s medical reports. Not to mention how carefully she had gone over all the notes and previous evaluations of Sheppard left by her predecessors, primarily the late Kate Heightmeyer.

In a strange way, she felt as if she were cramming for a major test in grad school, maybe something as big as her comps. She took those comprehensive exams such a long ago that she would not have expected to remember so clearly that convoluted mix of anxiousness and excitement. For all intents and purposes what she was currently preparing for should not make her so uncharacteristically nervous. Her next appointment should be just another evaluation and counseling session, one among the many she had already performed in Atlantis.

Before joining the Atlantis expedition, over three year working as a consultant at Stargate Command provided her with a plethora of experience working with people physically hurt and mentally traumatized by unfathomable things. Things that most people on Earth imagined only within the realms of science-fiction and horror stories. She should know by now that anything can happen to the people whose mental health she was responsible for, but this thing with Sheppard caught her by surprise. Having believed herself to be prepared for all eventualities, Eva never imagined that she would have to assess and treat a male high-level officer in the aftermath of his kidnapping and brutal sexual abuse.

Sheppard carried an enormous burden of responsibility, not just as the military commander of the expedition, but also because with his personality he embodied a big chunk of the hope and heart of this far-flung bastion. She had witnessed the effect his disappearance had on the morale of both the military and civilian contingent. People had already been acting anxious and worried after McKay’s kidnapping. Their anxiety level spiked exponentially after Sheppard was taken. Several individuals confessed to her their rising fears that they were all in serious trouble (massively screwed, was one of the milder terms used) if Sheppard didn’t get back soon. She could have almost sworn that the halls of Atlantis resonated with a collective sigh of relief when he came back. Everybody assumed that once he recuperated physically, he would resume command and take care of things like he always did.

Of course, only a few people knew any details of what happened to him during his captivity. Most of those in the know had limited inklings of the magnitude of his experience. Eva’s medical colleagues obviously had intimate knowledge of Sheppard’s injuries and their possible causes; Woolsey and Lorne (as acting commander) had Sheppard’s mission report. In addition to both of those sources, she also had insider information: Kharla’s recent revelations of the horrific experiences that most traumatized her. Given what she knew, she was very worried about Sheppard’s mental state and her ability to help him. Could the man who had bounced back after so many horrendous things—having his life drained away and returned by a Wraith, the foremost example in her view—do the same thing now? Did he have a choice given Atlantis’ precarious security situation?

The door chimed and Eva asked it to open. It gave her a childish thrill to mentally command such simple functions—the coolness factor of ATA controlled technology made her wish that there was some way for her to talk about it with her daughter Desireé through their sporadic email exchanges. But because of confidentiality agreements protecting an international veil of secrecy, all her stories would have to wait for whenever the existence of the Stargate program would be finally disclosed to the public. That was something to really look forward to.

“Hi doc,” said Sheppard from the open doorway.

Eva waved her hand to beckon him in. “Come in, Colonel and please sit. Would you like something to drink? I have tea, juice or water.”

“Water please.” He sat on the right chair in front of her desk. “Sorry about missing the appointment yesterday.”

“No problem. You needed your rest.” As she brought him the glass, she took in his appearance. He looked much healthier than when she had seen him a few days earlier—a deathly pale, still figure hooked up to life support. On a closer look, a clean shaven face and fresh out of the shower slightly damp hair did not mask the weariness in his eyes. “But it looks like you still need to catch up on your sleep. How well have you been sleeping?”

“Right to business. I like that,” a rueful grin momentarily reinvigorated his features. “It’s better now that I’m out of the infirmary. Last night I fell asleep quickly but I woke up a couple of times. Nightmares, the usual stuff. Look, I know what you are going to say.”

Intrigued, since she hadn’t planned what she would say next, Eva asked. “And what would that be?”

“Something about having nightmares is expected after being held captive. Believe me, I’ve plenty of experience with that. The nightmares will eventually stop and, no, I don’t want to take any drugs to help me sleep.” He looked smug when he finished ticking off his list.

“Well, I am glad we resolved that issue, even though it had not occurred to me to suggest you take any sleep aids so soon after leaving the infirmary. I think it’s a good idea to give your body time to naturally return to its normal sleeping pattern.” She could feel the tension emanating from him. This was not a good way to start. She gave him her most reassuring, Robinson-patented smile. “Relax colonel, I’m here to help you.”

“Sorry, I have to get back on duty ASAP. We have to find McKay. I know that I won’t be able to get off-world for at least another week, if I’m lucky, but I need to at least get cleared for light duty to be involved in command decisions,” he said, all the smugness evaporated.

“I understand and I will do everything I can to help you. My goals for today are to do the assessments for my report on your fitness for duty and to determine what we need to work on together to help you through this ….” She waved her hands instead of completing the sentence with one of the many cringe-worthy euphemisms that popped into her head. “I know from your files that you are not usually very forthcoming in these kinds of encounters but work with me, Colonel Sheppard, and I will help you. I will.”

Sheppard considered her carefully before replying. She wished she had a clue to what he was thinking. While on several occasions they had discussed the mental health of the military personnel under his command, this was their first encounter where he was the person needing to be evaluated and counseled. This official session was also quite at a different level than all the pleasant casual conversations they had so far. Sheppard had been her first mentor in all things ATA. He had even treated her to a puddle jumper flight and encouraged her to take the controls for a few blissful minutes. In an email to her daughter, she had described him as a charismatic, sharp-witted man and a fine commander. It had felt good to tell the truth. She had no idea of what he thought about her in her professional capacity. This was her test.

“I know you will,” he said with unexpected firmness, before adding more softly, “would you mind calling me John?”

Eva felt a little foolish for not being the one to propose that they go on a first name basis. She had worked with many military types who thrived behind the barrier erected by their rank; Sheppard obviously was not one of them. Anything that might relax his defenses sounded like an excellent idea.

“John it is. And on that note, please call me Eva. Agreed?”

“Yeah,” he said. He searched through the items in the wicker basket on her desk. He seemed torn between the Rubik’s cube and a blue stress ball. Experience had taught her that conversation often flowed more smoothly when people had something relaxing to do with their hands.

“Good. I am going to ask questions that are very personal, but I want you to try to answer them as frankly as you can no matter how difficult this may be for you. As you well know, everything you say to me is confidential unless it poses a danger to yourself or others,” she waited a moment before continuing. “So, what are your nightmares about?”

“It’s mostly Vernara. You know, re-living the best of,” he sounded like he knew perfectly well how weak that joke was. “Honestly, it’s okay. It doesn’t take me that long to fall back asleep.”

It struck her how he said “mostly.” She had a hunch that something else on par with this most recent ordeal was also troubling his sleep. She made a mental note to revisit this point in the future. She routinely preferred to avoid taking written notes during a session to not disrupt the conversation with her patients. Fortunately for her, she had a wonderful memory. “Were you alone last night?”

“Does it really matter?” he said. He’d picked the ball; without looking at it, his long fingers were making it rotate in his right hand.

“Yes, it does John. This probably feels awfully personal but the reason I am asking is that close supportive relationships play an important role in a person’s recovery from any kind of trauma. You and Teyla made your relationship official with Mr. Woolsey over a month ago. Everybody knows that in the couple of weeks before your kidnapping you were pretty much living in her quarters. I need to know if anything has changed.”

He looked surprised, “Everybody?”

“Atlantis is like a very small town, not much to do besides work and gossip. The two of you coming out of the closet, so to speak, has been all the buzz.”

“Crap,” he said, his cheeks flaming up.

Eva fought hard to keep a straight face. “Don’t worry, it’s all good. It’s as if everybody’s favorite movie stars—let’s say Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn,” she noticed his eyebrows lifting up. “And no I’m not dating myself, I just love the classics. Anyway it’s as if Cary and Katharine finally realized that they were meant for each other, like everybody else already knew. Oh don’t be upset. This is good for morale, a wonderful distraction from the impending doom that everybody is worried about.”

“Great,” his voice oozed sarcasm. Not losing eye contact, he switched the ball to his left hand. “Okay, fine. I stayed in Teyla’s quarters last night. I think that she kind of tricked me into it, in a good way. I fell asleep while reading stories to Torren. After that I didn’t have the energy to make a reasonable argument that I should get back to my own room.”

“You didn’t want to stay with her?”

“I was afraid of waking her up with my nightmares. I thought I might get loud.”

“Did you?”

“No, but I was restless enough to wake her at least once. I don’t think she heard me the other times,” He paused scrunching his eyebrows. Then he smiled. “On second thought, Teyla probably faked being asleep to protect my fragile ego.”

At that, Eva smiled too. It was a totally Teyla thing to do. “John, do you realize that Teyla didn’t trick you into staying just because she wanted to comfort you? She also needs you close to comfort herself. Things were very difficult for her all those days you were gone and then when you were in the infirmary. She had to remain strong so as not to upset Torren who kept asking where you were and when you were coming back.” Seeing how Sheppard started to look distraught, she quickly proceeded to her next point without letting him interrupt. “None of this was your fault, I just want to make you aware that she suffered as well and that she needs you too.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. The corners of his mouth slightly turned up in a smile. “Teyla is great. She is so strong and in control. She’s been very patient with me.”

“Why does she need to be patient with you?”

He looked at her as if she had asked a very stupid question. “I don’t even know why I’m actually volunteering this personal stuff. Maybe I’m really losing it. This isn’t me. I’m the military commander here—all these people depend on me to keep them safe. I can’t let down my barriers. I should just suck it up and move on. That’s what I’ve always done.”

Technically, he hadn’t really volunteered much of anything, but Eva was not going to quibble with that. He was on the verge of clamming up. No matter how subtly she could word it, threatening him with a delay on her report declaring him mentally fit for duty was also out of the question. Such an antagonistic approach would be a disaster.

She chose a more reasoned tack, “John, there is nothing wrong with you just because you may have decided to open up a little to Teyla and, hopefully, to me. Honest dialogues with a few people you trust will help you strengthen the so called barriers you use to function as commander of this base.” She paused and waited for him to meet her gaze before she continued. “Sometimes being strong and stoic is not enough, especially when whatever is going on inside you might jeopardize your closest relationships. Is it possible that you’ve realized that keeping things bottled up in your head isn’t healthy for you or those you care for?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“My guess is that you already told Teyla at least a big chunk of your story. And that’s probably already starting to help relieve some of your stress. There might also be some things that you aren’t comfortable discussing with her. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,” she said.

“Look, aren’t you supposed to first of all find out if I was compromised?” he said, changing the subject.

As long as he was talking, Eva didn’t mind jumping from topic to topic. The session would be much more helpful to him if he steered the conversation, even if he was using it as an avoidance strategy. “From your mission report, it doesn’t sound like you were. But since you insist, I’ll ask you some of the standard questions. At any point during your captivity, did Vernara or her guards question you about Atlantis and other intelligence matters related to the expedition?”

“No, they never questioned me. Vernara was completely uninterested in any information I had. She had a one track mind.” His face flushed as he spoke. He dumped the stress ball back in the basket and abruptly stood up. Pacing back and forth, he said, “I still don’t get what the hell possessed her to have me kidnapped in the first place. I met her once at that damn gala. She came on to me and I turned her down. I was ultra-polite, even when she kept on insisting in a very creepy way. What else was I supposed to do?” He didn’t pause to wait for an answer. “It’s as if … I don’t even know… Whenever any woman in the Pegasus galaxy batted her eyes at me, McKay used to call me Captain Kirk. But I’m not some freaking lothario, I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Of course you didn’t and no one, I repeat, no one thinks that you did.” Eva opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a couple of zip-locked bags. “John, please sit down, you are making me dizzy. How about a cookie? I have Fig Newton’s and chocolate dipped shortbread.”

He stopped pacing, but did not sit down. “She sees me once and six months later, she has a whole bunch of mercenaries stage an ambush and set a market on fire so that they could retrieve her sex toy. This galaxy is overrun by Wraith and she’s wasting resources and people’s lives to get her bedroom jollies. She said she acquired me, for fuck’s sake. Who the hell does this kind of shit?”

Eva reminded herself that this was not the time to discuss the millions of mostly young women and children entrapped in the sex trade on Earth to feed the appetites of depraved men. “I’m just guessing here, but it sounds as if Vernara had megalomaniac tendencies and she raped men to assert her power and dominance. Look, I could go on and on, making conjectures about her motives but that would be a waste of our time. She was nuts.”

The tiny grin that appeared on his face acted like a ray of sunshine, smoothing out the worry and pain lines. He wasn’t her type, but she could certainly see why so many women were attracted to him.

“Is that an official diagnosis in the DSM?” He said, finally sitting down. He took one cookie from each bag.

“My job would be much simpler if it was,” she said, pleased that he knew enough about her field to joke about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. She was forever grateful that working for Stargate Command meant she was not forced to use that dastardly manual to get reimbursed by insurance companies. “You didn’t do anything to warrant her aggression. You were just being you, a good looking man who, from what I hear, cleans up very nice in a uniform. Mr. Woolsey heard from his sources that Ms. Alkamade has now been linked to the disappearance of more than two dozen men in the past two years. She had an obsession that she could feed with her money.”

“Kharla called them… uhm… us bedroom companions. Nice euphemism, eh? When Vernara got tired of them, she passed them to her guards to use before she sold them or had them killed. All these men are probably dead by now or wishing they were.”

“You put a stop to that,” she said. What she didn’t mention was that while all the men that Vernara had enslaved were remarkably handsome, the last four had borne a striking resemblance to Sheppard—tall, lanky and dark haired, but none had that rare combination of exotic hazel eyes and masculine, yet lush lips. The other men had also been noticeably younger, barely grown boys. After their one and only encounter, Vernara must have become obsessed with Sheppard, not just because of his looks, but also because of the masculine power he held with his rank and military prowess. She probably considered him her biggest conquest.

“It had to be done,” as he said that his eyes darkened. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Interrogations would have been easier to deal with.”

“Why?” Knowing his history, she did not doubt him. However, she still had to ask to keep him talking.

“I would have resisted any interrogation. Whether it’s by torture or mental invasion—I’m good at fighting those. I’ve had training and way too much experience. What Vernara wanted from me, she just took and took. I couldn’t stop her.”

“But you did stop her,” Eva said.

“It was too damn late,” he sighed before continuing. "Did Kharla talk to you about what’s really bothering her?”

“You know that these sessions are confidential,” she said. “But you tell me, what do you think is really bothering her? Is it the same thing that’s twisting you?”

John stayed quiet for so long that she was afraid that she had made an error in judgment in thinking that he was ready to broach this topic. Then he began talking about what happened during the escape. His sparsely detailed story matched neatly and horrifyingly with what Kharla had said. Except that each of them painted the other in a much better light than they used to describe their own actions.

“Is that what your nightmares are about?” she said.

“Some but not last night’s,” he said. Instead of elaborating on the most recent nightmare, he switched gears again. “One of the worse things with Vernara wasn’t when she hurt me with her knife or the whip. It was when she was simply touching me with her fingers, her mouth—she was so slow and invasive. It was revolting. I couldn’t shut her out and she wouldn’t let me close my eyes. And all the inane crap she was saying. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said things about my hair and then about my eyes changing color when she hurt me. It was just bullshit to get under my skin.” He snapped open the sling and straightened out his injured arm, massaging it gently.

“Is it time for your pain meds?” she asked.

“No, it just gets a little stiff. I’m going to start physical therapy tomorrow.”

She glanced at the clock on her computer screen. “Just a couple more questions and then we’ll be done for the day.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

“Before, you said something about Teyla being very patient with you. Are you doing something unusual that would require extra patience?”

“I get these intense flashbacks at the worst of times. Like when, uh, when she touches me, even just my arm or shoulder, or the few times we’ve actually tried to kiss. I know it’s Teyla and then bang, something happens and it feels as if Vernara is … all over again. I’ve been a little jumpy when other people, like Beckett or Marie, touch me but I can control it now. But with Teyla, it happens when I least expect it. I’m afraid to close my eyes. Teyla is nothing like Vernara. It’s sickening.”

“They are intrusive recollections. It’s an apt name and it’s a very common response to sexual assault for both male and female victims,” Eva noticed how he seemed to cringe at those words. “I am sorry, John, I am guessing that those words, sexual assault, rape, victim make you feel very uncomfortable but I can’t think of any better ones to describe what happened to you. Can you?”

“Uhm, no. But I don’t feel like a victim. I wasn’t afraid of her, I was angry and I finally managed to make her stop. I killed her.”

“I am only using the word victim to refer to a person who received the kind of brutal, unwanted treatment you got on Khamala Prime. I looked in the dictionary and there aren’t any good synonyms. Unless you prefer unfortunate?” She saw him shake his head. “I guess not. And let me reassure you that you are not a typical rape victim for many reasons.”

“Yeah, I’m a grown guy assaulted by a woman,” he said with a distinct ‘duh’ ring in his intonation.

“That’s true but the main difference is that unlike most rape victims, you don’t fear being attacked again because you killed the perpetrator and you did not consider not reporting it.” She looked at him more carefully. “Or maybe you did?”

“No … not seriously. But not for any noble reason, mostly because I knew that I couldn’t get away with not mentioning it. The docs would have found out and I wasn’t going to lie to Teyla. I wouldn’t do that to her.”

Eva had been waiting for a good lead-in to another subject in her list of priority things to cover in the session. “Did you tell Teyla everything that happened?”

“Most of it. Some details, I just couldn’t.”

“Like about the guard?”

“She doesn’t need to know about that,” he said. “I dealt with it, it’s over. He caught me by surprise and I was unconscious for most of it. In a sick way, he did me a favor. He got too careless when he got too caught up in, in f—.”

“It’s all right, John. You can say it. It’s better if you say what he did. There is truth in some clichés—words do have power and verbalizing your experiences will help you manage.”

“You really think so?” Sheppard sounded skeptical. He ran his hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes. “Fine, I’ll say it. The shithead was in such a rush to stick his dick into me that he did a pathetic job restraining me. I killed him. It was over in a couple of minutes. I don’t dream about that …, I don’t. That was the least of the crap that happened in that hell hole.”

Maybe Sheppard had a point. Within the spectrum of torturous experiences he had been subjected to during his captivity, being briefly sodomized by the guard might truly register low in the radar. Still, she noted an undercurrent of something that didn’t quite fit; maybe too much detachment. As he held her gaze firmly under careful scrutiny, she got another hunch.

“John, have you been raped before?” He didn’t say a word but the brief flinch that animated his features gave her the answer. “When did this happen? There is nothing in your records about it.”

She glanced to the laptop screen and scanned through his file. How could she have missed something this consequential in his record?

“There was nothing to report.” He reached over and tapped the back of the computer. “You won’t find anything in there, Eva. There was nothing to report.”

“What do you mean?” It felt as if he wanted her to guess, but she truly had no clue. Sheppard had been in the Air Force for over twenty years. Maybe he had been assaulted when he was a very junior officer. As a good-looking young man with a maverick attitude, he could have easily attracted the unwanted attention of others who might have wanted to teach him a lesson. One of the dirty little secrets of the military was that, in addition to sexual violence against women soldiers, there was also a rampart and even more underreported problem of male-on-male sexual assault. In Eva’s view, the inane Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and the super-macho atmosphere of the armed forces played a huge role in keeping victims quiet. The few reported cases she had previously encountered involved enlisted men, but she was not naïve enough to think that such things did not occur among commissioned officers.

“It’s not what you think. The Air Force has been good to me. Yeah, there were some jerks early on, but no one I couldn’t handle,” he said. “It was Kolya and a couple of his men, before they fed me to the Wraith the first time. You must have read about that in my files, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Of course you did, you probably even watched the damned video. Let me tell you, the pain from the feedings was much worse than what they did. And after Todd drained me and brought me back, there wasn’t any trace of it left on my body. It was as if it hadn’t happened.”

“But it had happened, John,” Eva said. “You should have reported it. Doctor Heightmeyer would have helped you deal with it.”

“You might find this hard to believe, but in those days I was even less of a talker than I am today,” his thin smile did not seem congruent with the news he was delivering. “I saw the way everybody looked at me when I came back. Rodney kept on blabbering that I looked younger than before. Ronon was pissed at me for setting Todd free. Elizabeth oozed guilt for rightly refusing to negotiate. Carson lost himself in all the tests he ran on me. They all looked far more traumatized than I felt. I was happy to be alive and not a shriveled old man like Colonel Everett. So, I just told Heightmeyer what she wanted to hear.” Realizing what he just said, he hastily continued. “But that’s not what I’m doing with you, Eva. I’m telling you the truth. Listen, you are not going to put this on my record, are you? No harm done and I obviously dealt with it fine these past few years.”

It was a no brainer for her to agree with his logic. She had made a huge leap in gaining his trust and she was not going to jeopardize it for the sake of bookkeeping. Her job was to help her people, not to produce documents for Stargate Command bureaucrats. “Don’t worry John, this stays off your record. I really appreciate your honesty with me. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this session. Let’s schedule the next one.”

“Okay, but what are you going to put on the report about my mental fitness for duty?” He said, his casual tone tinged with worry.

 


	29. Chapter 29

Despite feeling emotionally drained, this time John left Robinson’s office with a smile. After three consecutive daily sessions, she had finally signed off on the electronic paperwork attesting that he was mentally fit to return to duty. With biweekly appointments set for the next couple of weeks, he definitely wasn’t off the hook from mandatory counseling sessions with her, but he could officially resume his role as military commander. The physical recovery was taking longer, though—he wasn’t going on an off-world mission any time soon. Lorne was going to be mighty happy to dump paperwork back in his direction. Being a desk jockey was not too heavy a price to pay for getting back to direct Rodney’s search and rescue efforts.

He headed to the gym to work on his prescribed arm and shoulder rehab routine. Just as he got there, a bunch of sweaty, bruised Marines filed out, greeting him with the respectful yet casual salutes that were the norm for Atlantis veterans and usually took a few weeks for new arrivals to learn. In a corner of the now empty room, Ronon was toweling off, even though he looked like he had barely broken a sweat putting the soldiers through their paces.

“Hey, Ronon. Thanks for not breaking any of them today,” John said.

“You’re welcome,” said Ronon with deadpan humor.

Just like old times, except that Ronon’s gaze lingered on him a bit too long, clearly appraising his condition. Despite their good intentions, John was getting sick and tired of his friends and colleagues continually looking at him with concern, as if he was permanently damaged goods.

He sighed and said, “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Are you allowed to spar yet?” Ronon said.

“Nope, but Carson gave me the go-ahead to start running tomorrow.” As if the damage caused by the arrow, whip, knife and other things had not been not sufficiently punishing, being used by Vernara while tied with arms stretched out in various positions had messed up his right shoulder. Despite all the newfangled, accelerated healing methods Carson and Jennifer were using on him it would take at least another couple of weeks for the cartilage tears in his shoulder to be healed sufficiently for him to resume any physical activities that involved contact. He should be grateful since back on Earth—away from the wonders of Ancient medicine—this type of injury would have set him back at least four months.

“Good,” Ronon said.

Silence reigned. John didn’t have to stress out his spidey-sense to feel Ronon tracking his movements while he searched around for the correct baby-sized, weights and the resistance bands he needed for the physical therapy exercises. This was one of the few times that he found Ronon’s lack of verbosity frustrating. They hadn’t had a real conversation since the infirmary. Was he being oversensitive or was there something left hanging in the air between them? He finally found the items in a box next to a stack of rolled-up, rubber mats—it was kind of embarrassing that he had to borrow the equipment used by the civilian women for their newly instituted Pilates classes.

His good mood dwindling, John decided that he might as well broach a difficult subject. The previous day, he had given Ronon access to the report he recorded for Woolsey. He figured this was better than the alternative option of telling Ronon about Vernara and Khamala Prime. John could just imagine Ronon standing there stoically impassive, while he fumbled away trying to describe what happened without really saying anything specific. There was not enough alcohol in Atlantis for that scenario to become bearable. So John had taken the easy route to keep Ronon in the loop, which was his right as a member of not only his team, but also of his de facto family. He trusted Ronon with this information. If, god forbid, this stuff had happened to a member of his team (let alone anyone else in his command) he would absolutely need to know what happened.

“Did you listen to the report I sent you?”

“Yeah,” Ronon said. “You did good getting out of there with Kharla.”

“Thanks,” John tried to read his expression, but (no surprise) he found no clue to what he might be thinking. Could Ronon have done something different in the same situation? Maybe he would have been able to tear the bindings with his brute strength and pull out a hidden knife from his dreadlocks to dispatch Vernara within minutes of waking up tied to that damned bed. While this sounded good, it didn’t seem likely. “Is there anything we need to talk about?”

Ronon gave him a strange look. “Listen, uhm … I can’t say that I know what you went through but I do know what it feels like to be used like a plaything.”

“Jeez, a plaything? You really had to call it that?” It stung slightly little less than it should because Ronon was using it to refer to both of them. That’s something they had in common now. As a Runner for seven years, Ronon certainly had tremendous experience being forced to be someone’s entertainment.

“Would you rather that I called you a bedroom companion?”

Ouch, there was the proof that Ronon had paid attention to his recording. His teasing tone forced a smile out of John. “No, no, plaything is good.”

“Okay then,” Ronon folded his arms against his chest. “What I wanted to tell you is that it does get better.”

“Thanks,” he bit down a complaint that it was taking too long. His four days of horror and over a week of recovery were nothing compared to what the Wraith had done to a big chunk of Ronon’s life.

John got busy doing sets of reps with the rubber exercise bands and puny weights. Ronon went to the bench press, added a couple of extra weights, and started lifting. Even if he had been physically allowed to do such a thing, John would not have volunteered to spot him, well remembering the look of disbelief Ronon had given him the first (and only) time he had tried to explain to him the need for such a safety precaution.

They continued for a while in companionable silence. John doing his somewhat painful and incredibly boring exercises because he had no choice and Ronon choosing to do something that he would normally scoff at, as a firm believer in keeping in shape by running, sparring with him and Teyla, and beating the crap out of the Marines. Expect for that last part, John also favored that type of fitness regimen. He was touched that Ronon had decided to hang around.

John let his mind mull over his most recent conversation with Robinson. He still couldn’t quite believe how he had buckled under her no-pressure approach, spilling the secret that he had kept from his closest friends for over three years. His confession had made him think that there was something seriously wrong with him—maybe Vernara had succeeded in breaking him. Robinson’s “you must be shitting me look” had made him snap out of that utterly depressing funk more quickly than all the reasoned words that accompanied it. She didn’t quite put it this way, but apparently he had grown and matured in the past few years. Whatever. It felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off his chest (something as heavy as what Ronon seemed to be easily lifting at that very moment)—not that he had any plans to let anyone else on that secret. No matter what Robinson said, he did not see any need to burden Teyla and Ronon by opening up that can of worms. Kolya was dead, Vernara and Hobson were dead—John wasn’t—time to move on and not waste his time brooding about them and what they had done to him. Enough of this “woe is me” shit. Life was too short and he finally had people to enjoy it with.

And he definitely hadn’t lied to Robinson. He had done a superb job dealing with how Kolya and some of his men had privately brutalized him before his very public feeding to the Wraith. In a way, he had managed to convince himself that it had never happened. After Todd returned his life, his body had healed completely—nothing bled, nothing hurt—maybe it truly had never happened. Instead, what took him much longer to control were the sharp memories of the excruciating pain from having his life sucked out. Every day for a week after his return to Atlantis, he had woken up in a sweat, sitting bolt upright on the bed, his hand pressed down on that spot on his chest. While the incidents became more sporadic, he lost count how many times they recurred. That nightmare had overwhelmed everything else for a long time.

Now, thanks to what happened on Khamala Prime, all this other stuff was bubbling up like scum from a broken sewer pipe (which fortunately, never happened in Atlantis). He had been truthful with Robinson about the Hobson attack not being the thing that bothered him much. He just didn’t mention that in his more recent nightmares Kolya and his men were now joining in the mix with Vernara’s assaults. This made him so furious. With what was going on with Rodney and just when things were getting really good with Teyla, he did not have time to deal with all this emotional shit.

“What’s wrong, Sheppard?”

“Uh?” Hearing Ronon’s voice made him realize that he had a death grip on the weight. He put it down. He was done with the exercises for the day. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

Ronon did not look convinced. “Do you want to work out with the punching bag?” He said in an uncharacteristically upbeat tone.

“I’d love to buddy, but Carson would kill me if I did.” John pointed to the bandage wrapped around his right bicep.

“Come on, your left arm is fine and so are your legs.” Ronon walked over to the tall padded cylinder hanging in the corner. “I’ll hold it for you.”

Quickly weighing the odds of hurting himself and pissing off Carson, with the desperate need to hit something, John made a decision. “Let me get a boxing glove. There’s got to be some laying around.”

To stop himself from using his right arm, he put it back in the sling. Ronon helped him get his left hand laced inside the glove and then he got started. It felt so damned good to hit and kick that thing. At first he visualized certain (now dead) people he wanted to maim very badly. After a while, he just let himself go into an unthinking rhythm guided by muscle memory and fueled by slowly dissipating anger. Ronon kept the bag firm, never breaking his stance no matter how hard John hit it. Soon enough his black t-shirt stuck to his body drenched in sweat.

“You should shout to power your punch,” said Ronon.

Dumbfounded, John stopped in mid stroke. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his wristband. “What?”

“Kia,” Ronon’s loud voice resonated in the gym. At a more normal decibel, he added actual words, “You know, like in that fighter movie.”

John gulped down a sip from his water bottle. “Is that a line from _Kickboxer_? I don’t remember it.”

“No, it’s from the one with the boy in the loose, white clothes,” Ronon released the bag and stood on one leg, the other knee bent high.

John recognized the very good impression of the crane kick pose. “ _The Karate Kid_?”

“The old guy in that movie is much funnier than the trainer in _Kickboxer_ ,” Ronon said in a reasoned tone. He returned to his position behind the bag. “Come on, you’re not done yet.”

“Yes, sensei,” with his good arm straight down his side, John did a mock karate bow. “You know, you already have the beard and mustache thing. I bet when you go bald, you’ll look like a giant Mister Miyagi.”

Ronon gave him a toothy smile, “Satedan men never get bald.”

“Oh, you’ve got to mention that to Rodney when we get him back.” John resumed pounding the bag.

By the time Ronon (the sensible one for once) made him stop, John ached allover. He probably needed to ice both arms and shoulders before taking a shower. Out of habit, he looked at his wrist to check the time. There was nothing there. He hadn’t been able to find his watch and dog tags in the haste to escape Vernara’s compound. Lorne had already taken care of providing him with replacement dog tags, their familiar weight against his skin a source of normalcy. Getting a hold of a new watch would be more problematic since the one lost on Khamala Prime had been his backup. The innards of the previous one had been fried when Wraith-Rodney had overzealously zapped him with a stunner.   

A look at the large clock hanging on the left side of the gym, told him that there was plenty of time to take care of his achy and stinky body before his lunch time rendezvous with Teyla and Torren. Today there would be no convalescent afternoon siesta; he was going to get back to work right after the meal.

As they walked out, Ronon said, “Do you want to meet at the usual time tomorrow to run?”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” John was eager to return to his normal routine. “You know that I’m going to slow you down.”

“That’s okay,” Ronon tactfully did not mention that even when in the best shape, John always slowed him down. Well, except during that unmentionable bug metamorphosis incident.

Not much later that day, John sat in the mess hall with Torren and Teyla. He felt pretty good after a hot shower, ibuprofen and an unplanned fifteen minute nap. He had not intended to fall asleep when he sat on what Teyla called the lazy chair—he shouldn’t have raised the footstool and closed his eyes. It had worked out for the best. Getting woken up semi-gently by Torren under Teyla’s indulgently smiling supervision was quite a treat.

His mood was further boosted up by the fact that he was back in his uniform. The food tasted better than usual and Torren was saying some of the funniest things. Today most of his sentences started with _Why_. Despite Teyla’s glares, John couldn’t help himself from tossing in a few ridiculous answers to prod him on. He got a warm and fuzzy feeling listening to Teyla’s ever patient answers through Torren’s persistent interrogation.

John remembered the first time he had held him while he flew a Dart to escape Michael’s Wraith Cruiser. Maybe it was because he’d been woozy from blood loss, but he could have sworn that the newborn had latched a hook straight to his heart. That tiny lump of flesh with huge dark eyes was part of Teyla—The woman he had fallen in love with a long time ago and lost because of what turned out to be an all-around massive failure to communicate. And now Torren was calling him Da and Teyla didn’t mind. Actually, she seemed kind of happy about it. Yet, so far he had resisted the temptation to call him son in return—he didn’t know if he had earned that right yet.

When they decided to get married, he and Nancy had agreed to put on hold the issue of raising kids for a few years while they focused on their careers and, with the little time they had to spare, on each other. That had been one of the few smart moves they made as a couple. Their plan hadn’t worked out very well, their marriage unraveled in the second year, ending in divorce by year three. Not a good environment for any child. This short-lived marriage coupled with John’s loss of his mother at a young age and the experience of being raised by a distant father (with lots of paid help) had convinced him that he was not fatherhood material. Being with Teyla and Torren had made him rethink that. He eyed Teyla speculatively, wondering if at some point in the future she might want to have a baby with him, a little sister or brother for Torren. Wouldn’t that be something?

Surveying the room, John noticed Kharla sharing a table with Dusty and a couple of her friends. Dusty was talking, probably telling them one of her outrageous stories, and the others were smiling and laughing. He was glad that Kharla was making friends. Since their momentous chat, he and Kharla had encountered each other a few times in the hallways and in the mess hall. They had exchanged friendly words but nothing more. He did not feel very comfortable being around her and he sensed that she felt the same about him. They had nothing in common, he was way too old to be her peer and the physical aspects of what happened between them were too much to overcome, even if they both agreed to absolve each other of any blame. He suspected that at some point Eva might suggest joint counseling sessions but he hoped to be proven wrong.

As he took a second glance at Kharla, another more awful thought suddenly struck him. He dropped his fork back in the plate. Crap, why hadn’t this occurred to him before?

“John, is something wrong?” Teyla said.

“No, I just remembered that I need to talk to Lorne,” he tried to sound calm and reasonable.

He did have to talk to someone, but Lorne was definitely not the right person. He smiled at Teyla before taking another bite of food. Fortunately for him, she got distracted by Torren dropping his spoon (probably imitating him) and switching to the hands-on approach to feeding himself, not a pretty sight with all that tomato sauce and elbow pasta.

Torren’s performance food art gave John time to mull over the problem at hand. Could such a thing really have happened? As hard as he had been working on suppressing them, vivid memories from the rape resurfaced. He had no trouble remembering the agonizing pain that shot through his back and arm, and the overwhelming sense of panic as he struggled to stop what was happening. But his recollections of how his body behaved below the belt were hazy at best. _Oh, what the hell_ , he told himself. The details were irrelevant, after what Vernara had forced him to do of course it was possible that he had gotten Kharla knocked up. This was not at all what he had in mind when he fantasized the possibility of fathering a sibling for Torren.   

He took another surreptitious glimpse at Kharla, searching for clues to help him figure out if she was pregnant or worried about being pregnant. Brilliant idea! All he got from his deeply honed observation skills was that she enjoyed the food and the company. Time for another approach. Being a healer and a smart woman, Kharla must have considered this possibility long before it occurred to him, he reasoned. Maybe she wasn’t worried because she had already gotten her period. Or maybe not.

From their only lengthy conversation, it was pretty clear to him that Kharla hadn’t mentioned her rape to the medical people. That meant that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to talk about the morning after pill or the availability of pregnancy tests. She probably wasn’t even aware that such things existed. Another thing to consider was that he knew nothing of Kharla’s personal beliefs and cultural traditions about … anything, let alone what to do if impregnated through rape. Would she want to go through with such a pregnancy? Would she decide to keep and raise the baby? If so, would she want help in supporting and raising the child? As far as he was concerned, what she did with her body was her choice, but if there was a kid around with half of his genes, he had to share responsibility.

His mind went a million miles a minute rattling off and rejecting all sorts of options about what she might do and what he should or could do in different scenarios. The food in his plate lost its appeal, a sick feeling building up in the pit of his stomach. Bottom line: he must determine what was going on and, if needed, he had to find a way to support Kharla in whatever she decided to do—all of this had to be done without jeopardizing his relationship with Teyla and Torren.

Teyla continued with the gargantuan task of wiping down Torren’s face and hands. The large plastic bib with a clever built-in trough had miraculously protected his clothes (now he understood why it was one of Teyla’s most treasured San Francisco shopping expedition finds). Under normal circumstances, John would have been happy to volunteer to toss him in the bathtub and give him a good scrubbing. He got as much a kick out of the bathtub toys as the kid did. Who could resist an armada of rubber duckies and toy boats? Unfortunately, with his still busted arm, he currently wasn’t in any shape to safely give the kid a bath. He also had some serious fact finding and thinking to do.

With what he thought was a calm expression set on his face, he rose up from his seat. “Sorry, Teyla, but I’ve got to go. I’ll catch up with you in a couple of hours.” He ruffled Torren’s hair, “You be good to your mama, little buddy.”

Before he could get a hold of his tray, Teyla fingers lightly touched his arm, “Is there something the matter, John? Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine. I just have to get started with work. I’ll see you later.” Instead of going with the impulse to kiss her lightly on the top of her sweetly scented head, he brushed his hand against hers. 

“Please do not forget that Carson said you should not to overtire yourself.”

“Don’t worry,” John said as he picked up the tray. He strode toward the exit.

Once he reached a deserted section of the hallway, he clicked on a secure channel of the com. “Hi Doc. I’d like to talk to you about something. Do you have any time now?”


	30. Chapter 30

Puzzled by John’s abrupt change in behavior, Teyla watched him make his way toward the exit of the mess hall. With the sling blending into the background of his black uniform, he looked fit and healthy as he moved with his usual long strides. Just a few moments earlier, she had basked under the loving glances he was projecting at her and her son. It warmed her heart to see him finally content and relaxed. In the past three days, he had visibly regained much of his health, most of the bruises, scrapes and other superficial injuries, along with the haunted look in his eyes had faded away. His sessions with Robinson seemed to have helped him find some degree of peace with the memories of his experiences.

During the past three nights that he had shared her bed—arms wrapped around each other while they talked quietly until he succumbed to sleep—he had not told her any more details about his captivity. Instead, he had asked her about her childhood and, in return, he shared cherished memories of when his mother was still alive. The pranks that he and his brother had performed on each other would have surely sounded more amusing if he did not have to explain to her so many things about his culture. Nevertheless, she felt as if he had bestowed upon her a gift with each brief story he regaled her with. To her, each was a small clue revealing precious bits from the enthralling mystery that was John Sheppard.

She still felt goose bumps thinking about what he had said the previous night. She had been giggling while picturing a seven year old John trying to explain to his mother why he should not be blamed when the light fixture in the kitchen had unexpectedly collided with a baseball.

“Never change,” he had said, hugging her more tightly.

“What do you mean?”

“I just like … I love you the way you are,” he had tenderly brushed his hand against her cheek, before teasing his fingers through her hair.

Dark pupils dilated with just a rim of green-gold under the dim light, he had leaned closer until their lips touched. It was a light kiss, more tender than passionate, but it felt monumental to her. It was the first kiss on the mouth he had initiated and completed since his return from Khamala Prime. She had not pressed him for more, content to lie there, her limbs entangled with his until he fell asleep.

Later that night, a snuffed out gasp and the sudden twitch of his body had woken her. She had shushed him before he had a chance to verbalize his usual apology for the noises he inadvertently made during his nightmares. She pressed herself against his chest, her arm slung around his waist, foreheads touching so that she could feel his warm breath and the tickle from his eyelashes when he finally closed his eyes. Through the flimsy material covering both of their bodies, she had felt him trembling slightly. Once again, sleep overtook him first. She did not mind, finding it quite soothing to let herself relax into the rhythm of his slow regular breaths. 

Today, he had been in a light hearted mood after meeting with Eva, who had signed off on his return to light duty, and a training session with Ronon, which had thankfully not caused any additional physical damage. Between hearty bites of his meal, John had cheerfully instigated Torren’s incessant curious questions. John was trying for sure to vex her, but he was doing it in such a good natured way that she did not have the heart to stop him. She enjoyed seeing the twinkle of mischief back in his eyes. It was one of his distinctive looks that made her want to slide astride on his lap and make him admit the error in his ways by kissing him into submission. Unfortunately, the mess hall was a very public space. She also did not know how John would respond. It was probably too soon for such things.

Then, his eyes had strayed around the large room and something or someone had surprised him so much that he had dropped his fork with a loud clang. In imitation, Torren had also dropped his spoon in his bowl, splattering slippery pasta and thick globs of red sauce over the rim. Then, working two-handed, her darling little boy had gleefully scooped handfuls of food into his mouth. Most of it slipped off his fingers before it found its destination, leaving trails of noodles on the table and down his bib.

She had looked at John, ready to tease him for being so distracted and chastise him for instigating such poor behavior in Torren, when she noticed that he was transfixed by something. Lines of worry scrunched his forehead. Before she had a chance to follow his gaze, she had to turn her attention back to Torren, barely managing to save the bowl from spilling onto the floor.  

By the time she returned her attention back to John, he had smoothed out his features and resumed a carefree posture. Still, his eyes betrayed him as he grinned reassuringly at her while offering a meek explanation about remembering an urgent need to talk to Lorne and get back to work. He did not fool her one bit.

“Where Da go?” Torren said. Miraculously, as soon as John had patted him on the head and asked him to behave, he had stopped playing with his meal.

“He went to work. We will see him later. Please eat your food properly.” Teyla smiled fondly at her son and handed him the spoon she had used to return to his bowl the splattered pasta that had landed on the table.

Teyla looked around the dining room to determine what could have possibly upset John so. She did not notice anything or anyone out of the ordinary. She tried to remember which way he had been facing when he had started acting so strangely. Thinking back, she visualized how he had turned his head away from her and looked around the room, the way he often surveyed their surroundings regardless of whether they were away on a mission or safely within Atlantis. When he had dropped the fork, his head had been turned toward the far corner closest to the serving line. As she recalled this detail, she deduced that he must have been observing Dusty’s table. She could not find anything particularly remarkable about the small grouping of young women—three Marines, two technicians and Kharla—who liked to socialize together. Teyla had noticed that they had welcomed the young healer into their group almost immediately after her arrival in Atlantis. She was very glad of that because she herself had found it very difficult to befriend Kharla despite her perfectly pleasant character.

Normally Teyla played a major role in making newcomers welcome to Atlantis. This had not been the case for Kharla. No matter how often she reminded herself that Kharla had helped John escape at great risk to herself and that the injuries she had caused him had not been her choice, Teyla could not forget that this young woman had been intimate with John—a nude, hurt and humiliated John. Despite the knowledge that Kharla had been an unwilling participant, Teyla frequently found herself brooding over what Kharla had seen and done to John. She had become quite frustrated with herself for lacking the mental discipline to put these irrational thoughts aside. Maybe it was time for her to seek out Eva’s counsel to learn to deal with this unwarranted, terribly misplaced jealousy.

At the moment though, she could not fathom why seeing Kharla after so many other days in her presence had made John react so strangely. Perhaps she was mistaken. It was certainly possible that John’s reaction was totally unconnected to Kharla. That was not what Teyla’s instinct was telling her, though. She resolved to ask John later. Presently, it was time for her to also return to work. Woolsey had tasked her with developing a plan to formalize supply arrangements with their most trustworthy allies.

On their way out of the mess hall, she intentionally stopped to exchange a few words with Dusty and her friends. Maybe, such repeated exposure to the universally acknowledged niceness that was Kharla would help Teyla overcome her unnatural animosity toward her. As usual, Torren enjoyed the cooing attention he got from everyone at the table. As if Teyla needed any further proof that her animosity toward the young healer was totally groundless, Kharla shyly offered to watch her son if she ever needed the extra help.

\---------------

Teyla’s conversation with John came sooner than she expected. She was ensconced in a meeting room near Woolsey’s office working on the supply plans for him. She had left the doorway open because, despite its spaciousness, the windowless, enclosed room made her feel a little claustrophobic. The mingled scents of coffee and tea reached her right before he spoke.

“Hi, Teyla. Do you mind an interruption?” John said from the doorway. He held two steaming cups.

“Of course not. Please come in, John.”

He walked in and handed her one of the cups, “I thought you might like some tea. Don’t get your hopes up though. It’s just from the mess hall, not your good stuff.”

“Thank you, John. Any tea is welcome while I am working on this,” she gestured at the screen.

“Glad to do my part to help keep you awake enough for one of Woolsey’s reports.”

Teyla blew into the cup to cool it down. John stirred his coffee, not showing much interest in drinking it.

“Did you already have your urgent talk with Lorne?” she said in a teasing tone. She was not angry at him for having caught him in such an obvious lie. She was curious to find out his motives and pleased that he had sought her out.

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. Look, I’m real sorry for being such a jerk at lunch.”

“Why do you feel the need to apologize?” She had certainly heard that expression often enough but people seemed to use if for all kinds of disparate situations. She did not know how it applied to John’s behavior in the mess hall.

“I got Torren all fired up and then I left you to clean up the mess. That wasn’t very nice of me,” he said. He tilted his head at the still open entrance. “Is it okay if I close the door?”

“Yes,” she watched the door slide shut. To achieve the same end, she would have had to get up and pass her hand in front of the control panel. Such a silly thing made her a little bit envious of John’s ATA gene. “I do not believe that you dropped your utensil in the dish on purpose. Am I correct?”

“Yeah. I’d just realized something—something else potentially very … um … troubling about what happened on Khamala Prime.” He paused and reached over for her hand, enfolding it in his. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. It’s just that it suddenly struck me that there is a chance, hopefully a really small one, that when Vernara forced Kharla and me, that she might be, ah ... crap, I’m babbling again.”

As he stammered the words, comprehension dawned on Teyla. She felt foolish for not having previously anticipated this possibility. Not that there would have been anything for her to do about it if she had.

John tried to tug his hand away from hers, but she clasped her other hand on top and held them there.

“You mean to say that Kharla might have been impregnated through the rape?” She said in a gentle tone.

“I don’t know, but maybe … yeah,” he released a forlorn sigh. “This is so screwed up. Sorry.”

“This is not your fault, John. Nor is it Kharla’s. Is that where you went, to speak to her about this?”

John looked shocked at that suggestion. “No, of course not. I went to talk to Doc Robinson.”

“Oh. But why?”

John eyed the shut doorway as if expecting someone to interrupt them. “Besides you, Robinson is the only other person who knows the reason why I would worry if Kharla were pregnant. I thought Kharla might have spoken to her about it or she might be willing to talk to her about it. You know, woman to woman. Not a great plan, but the best I could come up with.”

Strangely enough, Teyla felt a little excluded. “I could talk to Kharla woman to woman.”

“Of course you could, but I immediately thought of Robinson because I know that Kharla is comfortable talking with her about—about everything that happened.” he said.

“What did Eva say when you mentioned your concerns?” she asked although, having become quite familiar with how Eva worked with her patients, she felt fairly certain that she knew the answer.

“She reminded me that her sessions with Kharla, as with any other patient, are completely confidential,” John said. As he continued, he sounded like a petulant child. “It’s not as if I was asking her to divulge anything! I just wanted to talk it through with her and ask her opinion. This is the new me, remember? I actually talk… sometimes.”

“I am very glad that you sought out Eva. She is full of wisdom and practical advice about matters of the heart and mind. What did she advise you to do?”

“She suggested two options: talk to Kharla myself or wait for her to approach me. Not exactly the solution I was hoping for.”

“Since apparently, you do not wish me involved, those options sound reasonable. You have talked to Kharla before to help each other overcome your traumatic experiences, why would you seek to avoid her now for this important conversation?”

“I don’t think that she would feel comfortable talking to me about this. I certainly wouldn’t be,” John did not give her a chance to voice her disagreement. Shaking his head dejectedly, he said, “Teyla, we can rationalize my innocence all we want, but if she is pregnant it’s because of me. We were both raped but she’s the one who might end up paying the biggest price. Worse still, that was her first time. Sometimes I wonder how she can stand to be in the same building, base, whatever, as me.”

“I would not be at all surprised if she had very similar thoughts about how you could possibly bear to be around her,” she said.

John had made great progress in forgiving himself for the things he had been unable to prevent, but it would have been completely unrealistic of her to expect him not to still feel a strong sense of responsibility. This and the empathy that was also so entrenched in his character were some of the reasons why she admired and loved him like no other.

As she thought about this, Teyla realized that Kharla was carrying a very similar guilt burden to John’s and, unlike him, she had no one besides Robinson to confide in and help her though it. No friend, not one truly close and loving person like she herself was to John. Yes, Kharla had also befriended Dusty, Carson and others, but she couldn’t share her burden with them because of the secrets she kept, mostly for John’s sake. Teyla suddenly felt remorse for the way she had ignored the needs of the other innocent victim of the horrible crimes committed by Vernara. She promised herself to rectify the situation very soon. For now, she needed to focus on John and what had brought him over in the middle of the workday.

Focused on his cup and his own thoughts, John took his first sip of coffee. He grimaced in disgust.

“Cold?” The tea he had brought her might not have been be very flavorful, but it was definitely at the correct temperature.

“Cold and weak,” he said, putting the cup down. “I don’t know if you ever heard of this, but in some places on Earth, women and girls who are raped are forced to marry their rapist or they are killed by their male relatives for the supposed shame they have brought to their families.”

“I did not know that.” This was not one of the many things she had already learned about the incredibly disparate cultures of Earth. It continued to boggle her mind, how one single planet could contain so many extreme examples of the best and worst products of human civilizations. “Perhaps, if they had the Wraith culling them like livestock, they would not attribute such little value to half of their people, especially the half that bears the heaviest burden in producing the next generation.”

That comment provoked the slightest of crooked grins. “You’re probably right but that would be too heavy a price to set things straight. I don’t even know why I mentioned it.”

Teyla, of course, now understood why he would make such a connection. Normally, she would give him all the time he needed to stumble around and find the right words to explain himself, but this subject was causing him too much anxiety. His distraught appearance reminded her too vividly of his recent struggle to reveal to her what had happened on Khamala Prime.

“In all the cultures that I have become familiar with through the Pegasus stargates, sexual violation is very rare, but when it occurs it is always the perpetrators who are punished—never the victims.” She purposefully spoke in the deliberate tone she used in briefings for a new mission. “On all the worlds I know of, pregnant women are universally regarded with special respect. Their status is not dependent on their relationship with the child’s father or any other man. How could it be otherwise? Without mothers we would cease to exist.”

“Good,” he said, a little tension easing from his posture. “This extreme misogynistic stuff also doesn’t happen in the good old U.S. of A., but we do have people who believe that women who are raped cannot get pregnant, and if they do then they must have wanted it. And there are worse stories.” John scratched his head. “The laws of our land and of the other countries represented by the I.O.A. say that women have a right to terminate a pregnancy within the first trimester.”

“Yes, I know that,” she said. She still did not understand how and why any government would have the right to tell any adult what to do or not to do with her own body. This made no sense to her.

“You do?”

Teyla smiled at him. “Why are you so surprised at the wide topics of conversation that I have had with the women in Atlantis over the past many years? I would imagine that you and your male friends also talk about a wide variety of interesting subjects.”

“I’m pretty sure our range is more limited,” he said in an amused tone and then, more seriously, he asked. “Teyla, what do you think Kharla would want to do if she is pregnant because of—of Vernara?”

“Honestly, John, I do not know what she would do. If I were in her position, I would choose to try to stop the pregnancy. While Athosian women and others I know do not have access to the sophisticated methods available on your home world and here in Atlantis to control reproduction, there are a variety of herbal remedies that work well in regulating a woman’s cycle and stopping an early pregnancy. I imagine that as a trained healer, Kharla might be knowledgeable of such things.” She paused, unsure whether she should ask what was upmost in her mind. After a sip of tea she went on because they both needed to know the answer. “John, what do you hope that Kharla will do if she is indeed pregnant and you are the father?”

John’s voice was full of sorrow. “I—I would hope that she doesn’t go through with it. This is not the way to bring a new life to the world. It would be wrong for so many reasons.” He looked as if struck by another awful realization. “Crap… What if Vernara had planned this? Nah … but it doesn’t matter what I hope. It’s Kharla’s body, her choice. I can’t even tell her or even suggest to her what to do. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Would it be right for her to decide to make you a father against your wishes?” Teyla said.

“You know it’s not the same thing for a man. I could just walk away from it.”

Teyla noticed that he had said _could_ instead of _would_. She thought this had been a purposeful choice. “Perhaps some other men would, but would you really walk away if she decides to bear a child that you involuntarily fathered?”

“Yes, I … no I couldn’t. I would want to help with the kid. I don’t know how it could possibly work, but I can’t imagine not having a presence in the kid’s life in some way. I love being a dad to Torren and could not renege my responsibility to another. This is I why hope that it’s just me being ultra-paranoid about worst case scenarios coming true.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Look, we are not going to resolve this now. I actually do have to go and meet with Lorne,” he rose to his feet and reached for the cup.

“And I must finish the report for Mr. Woolsey.” She stood up and intercepted his hand, clasping it tightly. “John, whatever happens, it will turn out alright. You and Torren and I, together we will manage.”

She saw the unmistakable play of emotions on his face before he pulled her into a tight, one-armed embrace. “Thanks Teyla.”

They stayed that way for a few moments. She would never get enough of this closeness; the sense of safety it provided to both of them.

“I’ve got to go,” he reluctantly pulled away.

He looked so sad that she had to say something to cheer him up. “Torren and I have planned a surprise for you tonight.”

“Really?” he walked out of the door with a much happier face than when he had first come in.


	31. Chapter 31

Later the same evening, not long after dinner, John, Torren and Teyla went back to her quarters. In the morning, she was going to go off world with Ronon on a mission to seek out new clues to Rodney’s whereabouts and John had to face his first full day of work. They wanted to spend some quiet time together before going to sleep and Torren could not wait any longer to show John the big surprise that the two of them had worked on in the afternoon. John was so happy to resume his command that he had not complained about being stuck in Atlantis while what was left of his squad went off world.

He did not look as troubled as he had been earlier in the afternoon. Given the lack of privacy neither of them had mentioned their latest topic of heavy discussion. All she could do was wait until John brought her some news. Tonight, she would not think about any potential repercussions of what John had called the worst case scenario coming true. Whatever the future held, they would be fine—better yet, they would thrive. She would not allow her happiness to be upended by the vile acts of a dead person.

While John read Torren his bedtime stories in the main room, Teyla prepared for bed. All she had to do was wash her face and brush her teeth because she had taken a shower midday, after two back to back Bantos fighting sessions, the first an introductory class for a small group of military personnel and the second a challenging workout with Ronon.

With impeccable timing, John walked into the bedroom just as she was exiting the bathroom.

“Torren is ready for you,” John said. “He really likes his new digs. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to move him out of the bedroom? I would have helped.”

“Torren and I decided to make it a surprise. He is very proud of being a big boy who can sleep by himself. The move did not take long. Ronon helped me while you were being examined by Carson before dinner. Do you remember that we had talked about doing this before you were taken?”

John took a few moments to answer. “Oh, right we did. I sort of forgot.”

“That is completely understandable.” Teyla eyed the rectangular bandage covering his right bicep, “Besides, even though you are no longer required to continuously wear the sling, you are still not supposed to lift anything heavier than your tablet. I will go tuck in Torren before he changes his mind about being sleepy.”

When Teyla returned to the bedroom a few minutes later, John was in the bathroom. She could hear the buzzing  of his electric razor. She lit the five candles that were lined up on her dresser and filled her lungs with the soothing blend of scents of dried wild flowers and herbs from New Athos. Checking on the other part of John’s surprise, she opened in sequence each of the three drawers on the right to make sure that she had indeed completely emptied them. Satisfied, she removed her blouse and breast band, and slipped on the short sleeve shirt that John had left on top of the bedcovers. She stepped out of her trousers and put away the discarded clothes. Once seated in front of the small table near the window, she began to brush her hair with long methodical strokes.

When she heard the bathroom door slide open, she turned her head and was rewarded with a very enjoyable view of a bare chested John walking over to the bed.

“Hey, did you see my clean t-shirt? I thought I left it here,” he said patting the empty corner of the bed.

“Is this what you are looking for?” she pointed to the black material covering her torso.

“Oh,” he said. His gaze flickered from her chest down to her bare legs and back up. The eyes that met hers had a dark steamy look she had not seen in far too many days.

She put the brush down and stood up. “It’s very comfortable. Do you mind if I borrow it for the night?”

“Not at all. I guess I could go to my quarters and get another one.” He did not sound very enthusiastic at the idea.

“Perhaps that could wait until tomorrow? I would be happy to keep you warm tonight.”

“That’s the kind of offer I can’t refuse.”

A nuance in John’s playful tone made her think of interesting possibilities that went beyond simple sleeping arrangements. Maybe this would be the night that things between them would start to return to normal. While she hoped it would be so, she was prepared to wait however long it took.

She stepped next to the dresser and pointed to the right hand drawers. “I emptied out these drawers for you to put some of your clothes in, if you wish. There is also room in the closet.”

She felt strangely shy bringing up the topic. They had not overtly discussed their cohabitation arrangement. Things had evolved very quickly after all the years it had taken them to reveal their true feelings for each other. John had begun to spend the night here not many weeks after Rodney’s disappearance, when they had most needed each other’s company to endure the loss and uncertainty.

“Thanks, Teyla,” John sounded genuinely pleased. “I’ll get Torren to help me bring some stuff over tomorrow. He’ll get a kick out of that.”

“He certainly will.” She walked over to the panel on the wall and dimmed the lights.

John sat on the bed to unlace and slip off his boots. Then he stood up to remove trousers, fold them neatly and lay them over the back of the nearby chair, where he had already placed a fresh long sleeved shirt and socks, all ready for use in case he had to get up for an emergency in the middle of the night. He lobbed his balled-up used socks into the wicker basket that stood in the corner nearest to the bathroom. His face broke into a boyish grin when the arching projectile neatly hit the mark. This time he had used an underarm shot instead of the previous night’s overarm throw that had made him visibly wince because of his still healing arm.

Perusing his body, Teyla confirmed that while the grey undergarments did look fine on him, she still missed the black ones that so nicely contrasted with his skin while complementing his dark hair. She had done his laundry while he was sick, thus she knew that he had a plentiful supply of those in his quarters. In her experience, men rarely changed wardrobe habits on a whim. Sensing that this change in behavior had to be connected to that blasted Alkamade woman, she fought off the temptation to tease him about it.

“Teyla, I was thinking that after we get Rodney back and we catch a breather, we could look for bigger quarters so that Torren could have his own room, separate from the living room. There are some nice family-sized apartments in the upper South towers; a few have balconies with completely child-proof sliding doors.”

His use of the word family said much. His concern about child-proof quarters meant even more. “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

With an excited flutter in her chest, she pulled down the covers on her side of the bed. She looked up to entice him to join her and noticed that he had not moved. He was starring fixedly at the dresser. She thought she saw him shudder.

“John, what is wrong? You do not have to bring any clothes here if you do not wish to.”

He turned to face her. “Uh? I do want to. It’s just ... it’s the candles …. would you mind if I snuff out the candles?”

“No, of course not. Is it the scent? It is a new blend.” She quickly walked over and pinched each candle with wet fingers to smother the flames and minimize the fumes.

“I’m sorry; I know how much you like them. Trust me, it has nothing to do with the scent.” He looked embarrassed as he sat on the bed. The room lights adjusted to a dimness mimicking the amount of light produced by the candles.

She sat down next to him, her thighs barely touching his. The heat from his body made her want to snuggle closer but she waited. She did not want to push him to do anything he was not ready for.

“John, what is it about the candles?”

“Teyla, I can’t …” He muttered something else to himself as he flopped backward on the bed. Teyla caught a few words, something about manning up, but she was not sure that she had heard him correctly.

“Please, whatever it is, you can tell me.”

She stretched sideways on the bed next to him, her legs also dangling over the side but much less so than his. They lay there quietly for several moments.

“Vernara … she  had dozens of candles lit in her room,” John said, all the flirting undertones replaced by quiet sorrow. “They smelled nothing like yours. They stunk. Yours smell wonderful, like a fresh field of flowers in the spring. But the lights—the lights just take me back …”

“I am sorry. I did not know.”

“I didn’t tell you. I thought it would stop after I got used to them again. Obviously, it hasn’t.” He flung his left arm over his eyes.

“Not yet, but it will. You must be patient with yourself. As you would say to Rodney, you have to give yourself a break.”

She noticed when he surreptitiously wiped his eyes as he moved the arm off his face. He turned on his side to face her. It seemed to her that each time she gazed into his eyes, she saw another mesmerizing composition of shades of green, gold and touches of greyish blue. The love and passion in his gaze still continued to surprise her because it had taken her so long to see what had been in front of her all along and because sometimes she felt underserving of such complete devotion from this man.

The first year she had joined his team, she overheard a small group of female scientists gathered for a meal discuss the physical attributes of various men in the expedition. Very scientifically, the women had graded selected members of the male contingent on a scale of one to ten. Hearing that John was on top of the list and Rodney somewhere in the middle, she vowed to herself never to mention it to them to avoid providing more fuel for their childish arguments. One woman said that John was hot and another called him sex-on-a-stick, everyone else agreed enthusiastically with them. After she overcame her initial surprise at hearing these otherwise very serious people talk about others in such a shallow, objectifying fashion, she had to admit that they were right about John. He was much more than that—but  from a purely physical point of view, “sex on a stick” described him quite nicely. With that thought firmly implanted in her brain, she had to steel herself to act very professional around him, maybe even to the point where she became blinded to his attraction toward her. Now, over half a decade later, he was older, they both were, but he still was that and much more to her. She sorely missed being physical with him.

He lightly placed a hand on her hip, right below the bottom of the shirt. A shiver of pleasure went up her spine. She lightly brushed his chest with her hand, enjoying the tickling sensation from the soft hair. Focusing on the present, not the past, she pried her eyes away from the paling but still visible twin curved scars which radiated outward from his sternum, following the lines of his ribs. Despite meditation and talks with Eva, she still felt simmering rage whenever she thought about the senseless cruelties that had most recently marked John’s body.

John cupped her chin. “Teyla, I really, really want to make love to you … but I don’t know how far I’ll be able to go,” he said in a tone that started sultry and ended in a soft apologetic whisper.

“We shall go only as far as you are ready. I would be quite happy to lie next to you and keep you warm. After all, it is my responsibility because I took your shirt.”

“And you take all your responsibilities very seriously.”

Delighted by his reaction, she responded to the humor in his tone by arching her brows and saying as seriously as she could manage, “Of course.”

“Teyla,” he said in a husky voice.  Beneath her hand, his rib cage rumbled with suppressed laughter.

His fingers skimmed under the hem of the shirt and ever so slowly inched up the curve of her hip, radiating a delicious warmth. In the past, she would not have hesitated to begin her own exploration of his body. However, this felt like a first time all over again, making her question everything that she had already learned about how to excite him. Resolute, she refused to let the sadness and anger at this loss of familiarity squash her desire for him. First times were also to be treasured and how many people got to have more than one with the same partner?

Putting all doubts aside, she focused on his mouth, starting with light kisses to see how he would react. Instead of shying away, he responded in kind, nibble by nibble, slowly at first and then more aggressively. His hand continued to roam, playing under and around the lace trim of the satiny panties she had purchased in San Francisco. She slowly brushed the instep of her foot up his leg, ending with her leg hooked over his hip—their  bodies pressed more tightly together. That opened up all kinds of possibilities for his wandering fingers. She shivered in anticipation. Even though he was primarily using one hand, he seemed to be touching her everywhere, triggering delightful responses deep within her body. Craving for more skin to skin contact, she tugged at her shirt.

“Oh, now I can have it back?” he said as he helped pull the fabric over her head, his hand lingering here and there.

In answer, Teyla flung the shirt onto the floor and recaptured his mouth with a much deeper kiss. She was thrilled that he took everything she gave and returned it in kind, and more. Somehow with minimal loss of contact, they managed to reposition themselves more comfortably lengthwise on the bed, heads cushioned by pillows, feet no longer dangling. Their mouths, tongues and fingers feasted on each other’s bodies. Her dormant pleasure centers awakened. Not much later, her last stich of clothing underwent the same type of treatment as the shirt. John was finally the one that was overdressed. She tugged at the waistband of his undergarment to free him from the visibly constraining fabric.

He grasped her wrist and said, “Not yet.”

Biting back an objection, she moved her hand from the flat plain of his belly upward, following the enticing midline of masculine chest hair that arrowed from his navel. She played with the nubs of his nipples while he kissed her neck. She hitched her breath when he breached the wetness between her legs. For a while she was lost to an ebb and flow of sensations. Her fingers tangled in his hair while he teased and sucked her breast as his fingers relentlessly moved in and out and around her core, following her natural rhythm. He remembered quite well how to drive her wild. Definitely not a first time.

“John,” she gasped more than once.

“I love you,” he said ever so sweetly.

He persisted in nimbly playing with her, until she peaked with stifled cries of intense pleasure as her body broke into shudders. When she finally regained the control to open her eyes, she saw his smug smile. His hand was now gently gliding along the full curve of her back. The hardness of his arousal pressed between them excited and reassured her. She wanted more and there was a strong possibility that she might get her wish. Dearly hoping that he was ready, she renewed her attack on his irresistible mouth. He let his head sink deeper into the pillow, relinquishing control. She ran her hand down his side until she reached his hip, where she stayed to explore the contrast between smooth skin, hard bone and muscular behind.

Understanding why he had resisted this before, she held back from stripping him as quickly as her body’s urges wanted her to do. She stroked him through the cloth. He groaned and stiffened even more in response. That could not possibly be comfortable.

“Please let me,” she said lightly touching the waist band.

“Carson doesn’t think that it will grow back.”

“Then, we might as well get used to it,” she said in her most matter of fact tone.

“When you put it that way…”

The lights in the room dimmed further. Shifting his weight, he slipped off the garment in question and then resumed his position on his side facing her. Thinking that he did not want her to “check him out” (another very handy Earth expression), she kept her eyes leveled with his, which looked so dark in this light. Starting from his midriff, her hand roamed lower and lower. The initial strangeness of not encountering a patch of curly hair was quickly supplanted by the sensuous, silky pleasure brought by its absence. She felt like a traitor for responding in such a way.

John’s self-consciousness was certainly not keeping him from reacting to her touch. He inched closer, reaching over to place her leg back over his hip. They teased each other’s bodies until neither of them could take it any longer. Then he entered her, filling her completely as they became one. She let him control the pace, maximizing his pleasure her priority. Of course, that was not the way he saw such things and soon enough she too was moaning and gasping.

She almost made a fatal error when she tried to push him onto his back, one of their favorite default positions. When they had first started their passionate encounters, his preference for what seemed to be more passive positions had initially surprised her. He had explained it to her in just a few words—better access and better view—and then proceeded to demonstrate, especially the access part, to her immense benefit. Without any doubt, the things he could do thanks to his long arms and fingers, and warm mouth were far from passive.

This time though, when she attempted to roll them over, his back and leg muscles immediately tensed to resist her. She whispered an apology and once again relinquished control. Instead of saying anything, his grip on her buttock tightened and his thrusts deepened. They both lost it soon after he slid his hand downwards to insert a finger where their bodies joined. The masterfully placed, added pressure sent quivers through her body. John, being true to himself, waited for her before finishing with his own loud gasps. They remained entwined for several minutes, breathing deeply and caressing each other.

After another tender kiss, he said, “You’re amazing.”

“No more than you.”

Chuckling, he untangled himself from her. “I’ll be right back.” On his way to the bathroom, he picked up his briefs.

While she waited for her turn, she fixed the bed, straightening and properly tucking in the sheets and blankets that had piled up on the floor. Despite a few glitches, their love making had been wonderful and would continue to be so. Ever so patiently, she planned to flood all of John’s senses with such pleasure and love that the torture he had endured would become nothing but a distant memory.   

She found her panties and John’s shirt. With a sigh, she pulled out her sleeping gown from the bottom shelf of her night table.

“You don’t want to sleep in my t-shirt?” he said, sounding disappointed. “It looks good on you.”

“We are going to sleep and you need to wear the shirt under your sling which you are still supposed to use at night. Correct?” She tossed the shirt and he caught it left handed before it hit him in the face.

“Yes, ma’am.”

By the time she got out of the bathroom, John was flat on his back half asleep. She slipped under the blankets and snuggled up very close to him. He lifted his left arm so she could lay her head on his shoulder

Peering at him under her lashes, she said, “I was thinking that now that Torren’s bed is in the main room, there is enough room over there for your lazy chair.”

John opened his eyes just a slit to glance in the direction she was pointing at. “Yeah, you’re  right.”

“It would be a good place for you to nap and you also said something about showing me other uses for the chair?”

This time, John’s eyes opened much wider. “And they say that men have a one track mind.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: Maybe, if you squint really hard, a tiny one for the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by J. Graham, A. Griswold and M. Scott.
> 
> Acknowledgements: Thank you to Amycat8733 for being my wonderful Beta reader. All mistakes are mine.

While sitting at a table in the receiving part of the infirmary, Kharla leafed through the large book lent to her by Beckett. The wealth of information contained in the Lantean’s books and computers was a constant source of amazement. Learning to read the language used by the Lanteans stood nearly at the top of her long list of things she planned to do. Everyone here willingly answered her incessant questions, but there was so much more she could learn if she could read the paper and digital books that these people possessed. 

Beckett said that this book was called _Gray’s Anatomy_. Despite being unable to read any but the simplest words in the text, she recognized many of the parts of the gastrointestinal system illustrated by the detailed drawings. She had seen them earlier in the morning when she had been permitted to witness a surgery that Beckett and Martini had performed on an Athosian adolescent male who had suffered internal injuries from a fall off the side of a cliff.

Like the Lantean doctors and nurses, Kharla had donned surgical scrubs, a cap and mask. Martini had told her where to stand next to the operating table so that she could observe the procedure without interfering with their work. Everything about the experience—including the scrupulously clean surgical suite, the shiny sterilized instruments, the beeping monitoring equipment, the crisp drapes carefully placed on the patient’s body, and the methodical collaborative work of the surgical team—had impressed and excited her tremendously. All these experiences were feeding a dream that had been slowly coalescing in her mind since she had begun helping out in the Atlantis infirmary. 

“Are ye all right, love?” said Beckett.

She had not heard him move to stand near her. She had grown complacent in the safety of Atlantis, no longer worried every minute about Vernara’s unpredictable temple or her personal guards’ propensity for petty cruelties.

“Yes, I am fine,” she said.

After being initially startled by their quaint familiarity, she had grown quite fond of the endearing expressions Beckett lavished on her and many others regardless of their age and rank. He had become one of her favorite people in Atlantis. While he looked and sounded nothing like what she remembered of her father, she had started to feel a whisper of fatherly affection for him that went beyond the respect due to his status as a highly knowledgeable and kind physician doctor.

“Are ye sure? You seem distracted.”

With a sigh, she closed the book. “I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that I do not know about anatomy, medicine, physiology … everything. I thought I had achieved a certain degree of mastery of the healing arts as an apprentice to Healer Lagona, but compared to you I know very little. There is so much to learn.”

“Don’t be discouraged, Kharla,” he said in his perpetually kind voice. “I can tell that ye have the passion to learn all that ye want to. Ye are right around the age that young people where I come from would start their medical training and ye already have tremendous practical knowledge and experience that most of them would greatly envy.”

“And I envy their ability to read this,” she reverently touched the cover of the book in front of her.

“Ye are already making progress learning to read our language. It’s not going to happen overnight but, with your smarts, ye’ll master it much sooner than you expect it.”

Kharla felt herself blush at the compliment. “From what you, Doctor Martini and Doctor Keller have told me, to become a medical doctor in your world requires many years of schooling, followed by more years of hands-on training for different medical specialties. I cannot even imagine what a wonderful experience it must have been to go to medical school. To have the opportunity to be totally immersed in learning and not to have to worry about … other things.” She had meant to say survival, but she did not want to sound petty or offend him in any other way. No one had told her outright, but from the information she had gleamed from various people, she understood that, with the exception of Ronon, Teyla and her fellow Athosians, most of the people in Atlantis came from a planet so far away as to be completely safe from the Wraith. That too boggled her mind.

“Aye, medical school was quite an experience but I don’t know if ‘wonderful’ is the right word for it. Ronon told me that Sateda had medical school. A …  close friend of his studied there and became a doctor. All those people lost because of the bloody Wraith …” Beckett shook his head in sorrow.

Kharla dimly recalled hearing about the ruined cities of Sateda—a civilization significantly more advanced than what her people had managed to achieve and hold on to on her homeworld, Jenev. In the end though, both the mighty Sateda and the puny Jenev had fallen to the Wraith. Death and rubble all the same.

It was no use dwelling again on the loss of her entire family and friends—she had accepted a long time ago that there was nothing left for her on Jenev. Sheppard had liberated her from Khamala Prime and now she had to find her own path to a life—a good life. Something that would have maybe made her parents proud. Or at least something that would her help achieve a degree of happiness and fulfillment.

Beckett sat at the other side of the table and busied himself with the computer. He appeared very intent in his work. Perhaps this was not the best time to broach the request she had been harboring close to her heart. Things in Atlantis were visibly unsettled. There were so many signs of tension and preparations that even a stranger like her could not fail to notice. In addition to concerns for the recovery of a certain Doctor McKay, she had also heard about imminent danger from a Wraith Queen called Death. Despite the ominous name, this news caused her only a modicum of additional anxiety because she was accustomed to living under the constant threat from the Wraith. Death would be an apt name for all of them. Life must not be put on stasis because of them.

_There is no time like the present_ —she could just hear the sarcastic tone Lagona had used when she had found her too slow to respond to one of her commands. She was right. It was pointless for Kharla to wait for a more auspicious opportunity. She had to find out if her little fantasy could become a reality or if she needed to make alternate plans.

“Doctor Beckett, I am sorry to disturb you but I wanted to pose a request for your consideration,” she said.

“Yes, love?” Beckett looked up from the computer screen.

“I hope you will not think that this is too presumptuous. Since medical school is not within my reach, I—I would much like to know if I could officially apprentice myself to you. I understand that you are very busy and I promise not to be in the way, and to help you as much as I can in any way that I can.”

“Oh, Kharla,” Beckett said. “I am honored by yer request, but it’s not that simple. I’ll remain here in Atlantis for a while longer, but at some point I’ll return to my work in the refugee and resettlement camps. So many people have been displaced by the Wraith …”

“That would be perfect. I could be your assistant and share with you more of my knowledge of the botanical medicines. You and Doctor Keller said that it is possible that some of them could be used to make even more powerful medicines. I would gladly help with that.” She could tell that he was not outright rejecting the notion. “Please at least think about it?”

“Lassie, I admire your enthusiasm, but I can’t possibly be a one-man medical school.”

Maybe she was wrong with her first impression. “I would not expect you to provide me with a medical school education. I would like the opportunity to continue to learn what you can teach me and to help you do what you do. Even without access to the medicines and technology you have here, the medical skills I could learn from you would greatly enhance my ability to help injured and ill people wherever I might settle in the future.”

For a few moments, Beckett seemed lost in thought. Rubbing his chin, he mumbled to himself, “Some of the others might be interested too… Uhm, an Atlantis medical training center…  Dear Lord, that would be something … if we could get out of this constant fear of attack from the Wraith. Maybe there might be others interested in paramedical training …”

Kharla opened the book to another section and leafed through it as she quietly waited for his response. She could be very patient when necessary.

Finally, he said, “I can’t promise anything, Kharla, but I think that we should be able to work something out. I’ll need to speak to Doctor Keller and Mister Woolsey about this.”

“Of course, I understand. Thank you for considering this. Thank you so much,” Kharla said. She held herself  back from jumping out of her seat to hug him.

“Now, let’s get back to work.” He waved for her to follow him to a nearby examination bay to check on a patient.

At lunch, the state of euphoria she had been feeling since her talk with Beckett began to evaporate. While she had gained reasons to be optimistic about having the type of future that previously she could not have even dared to dream about, there remained another unresolved, troubling aspect of her life.

The idea to let nature take its course had seemed quite reasonable at the time, but after so many days of lingering doubts, she had begun to rethink it. Her menses had still not made an appearance but she did not feel nauseous or fatigued, her breasts were not swollen or tender, nor did she exhibit any of the other signs that might be associated with the early stages of pregnancy. In reality, she felt much better than she had in a very long time. All the bruises, scrapes and other injuries from Khamala Prime had healed completely or nearly so, and she no longer felt the persistent hunger pains that had been her constant companion in the Alkamade household. In the luxurious mirror of her private bathing chamber, her reflection appeared much less gaunt than it had the first day she awoke in the infirmary. And even though she still had occasional nightmares, she was better rested than ever before. In the midst of all these positive developments, she still did not know if she was pregnant or not.

Her healer training provided her with various remedies for the situation. If she had been on Jenev or even on Khamala Prime, she could have easily gathered the herbs, pods and wild mushrooms needed to brew a strong tea that would have forced the start of her menses. Here in Atlantis, surrounded by frigid waters and no easily reachable temperate land, she had no unobtrusive access to the ingredients necessary to make any of the handful of remedies familiar to her. Without being able to use the computers and other instruments, she could not find out on her own if she had been impregnated or what medicines might be available in the Atlantis infirmary to suit her purpose.

As she walked down the hallway to return to the infirmary after the midday meal, she once again reviewed her arguments for and against asking for help. On hearing of her rape, Robinson had encouraged her to seek medical assistance in the infirmary. Unwilling to let anyone else in on such a personal matter, Kharla had reassured her that she was fine and that she had everything under control. Today, her conviction that as a trained healer she should deal with this by herself had started to waver.

“Hello, Kharla,” she heard a chipper young voice call behind her.

She stopped and turned around. The incongruous sight of the little boy holding hands with the tall lanky soldier made her smile.

“Greetings Torren and Colonel Sheppard.”

“Good afternoon, Kharla,” said Sheppard. “I’m taking Torren to visit Dr. Kusanagi. He’s going to help her out for a while. Right, little buddy?”

“Yes, I help Miko, Da. She likes my pictures.”

The small knapsack that Torren held slung over one shoulder was on the verge of falling to the floor. To secure it, Sheppard gently helped the child insert his free arm under the other strap. He playfully ruffled the boy’s thick mop of brown hair.

“Hey, Kharla, do you have time to talk for a few minutes after I drop him off?” Sheppard said. “Kusanagi’s office is right around the corner.”

“Yes, of course. I will wait for you here,” she said.

“Great. I’ll be right back.”

As she watched the two figures continue on their way down the corridor, she overheard their conversation before they turned the corner.

“When’s mama coming back?” Torren asked.

“She’ll be back after dinner, but probably before your bedtime. In a couple of hours, I’ll get you so that you can help me drill the newest batch of Marines. Alright, kiddo?”

“Sure, Da,” said Torren.

Kharla smiled at the excited tone in the boy’s voice. While not related by blood, the two of them acted as if they were a tightly bonded father and son. Dusty had told Kharla the story of how an injured Sheppard, along with Ronon and the disappeared Doctor McKay, had embarked on a risky rescue mission to free a pregnant Teyla from a Wraith cruiser. The child had been born during that rescue and Sheppard had held the infant while flying a Dart to bring back to Atlantis not only Teyla, Ronon, and McKay but also the boy’s father, an Athosian man named Kanaan. To honor Sheppard, Teyla had named her son Torren John. Doubtless, there had to be a fascinating story about how those three had ended up coming together as a family, with Kanaan left as the odd man out. Her piqued curiosity notwithstanding, Kharla did not feel right to question her new friends to find out more. Yet, she could not help but wonder if Teyla and Sheppard had plans to have children together. Sheppard was such a wonderful father.

After the talk when they exonerated each other for what had happened in Vernara’s chamber, Kharla had become more comfortable being around Sheppard. Even though she still felt guilt, his sincere belief that she was blameless gave her some peace. In the past few days, they had greeted each other in passing several times, but they had not conversed at any length. He always spoke to her kindly, showing concern and interest in her comfort. For a fleeting moment, she had considered talking to him about what to do if by misfortune she was indeed pregnant, but she had quickly dismissed the idea for fear of again raising the specter of Vernara’s chamber of horrors.

A short time later, Kharla and Sheppard were ensconced in an empty room off a side corridor. She immediately went to the window to admire the contrast between the glistening towers of Atlantis and the wild seas around them. Sheppard stepped next to her.

“I never get tired of the view,” he said.

“It is magnificent.” She took a good look at him and added, “You look much healthier than three days ago. How is your recovery proceeding?”

“I feel good. I’m back at work on light duty and I hope that in another week Carson will clear me for off world missions. The best part is that I finally don’t have to wear the sling all the time.”

“I am still astounded by how quickly you managed to recover after having been so ill.”

“Carson and Jennifer do excellent work,” he said with a grin.

“They do. I am learning much from all the healers here it Atlantis.”

“That’s great. I had a hunch that you would get along really well with them.” He appeared uncertain on how to continue. “Look, Kharla, I am very sorry about this but I need to ask you something extremely personal.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you if—if because of what happened on Khamala Prime … do you think that there is any chance that you might have gotten pregnant?”

The question severely tested Kharla’s ability to keep her emotions at bay. Maintaining eye contact, she said, “I understand why you would ask me. I appreciate your concern but you need not worry about that. I am not with child.”

The relief visible in his face was clearly worth the price to herself for the lie. More than ever, she felt certain that Sheppard must not be involved in whatever she would decide to do. For both of their sakes, this had to be solely her decision.

After she and Sheppard parted ways, Kharla thought long about something Carson had told her recently. He had said that a good healer uses the things that are available to help her patients. In this case, she was the patient who needed to find out whether or not she was pregnant. The things at hand were the medical marvels that the Lantean doctors and nurses had been so generous in showing her. It was time that she proactively sought out a definitive answer to the question gnawing away at her gut. The uncertainty impeded her ability to plan her future. And after her easy lie to Sheppard, she no longer held any doubt about what she should do if her worse case fear became reality.

Earlier than usual the next morning, she rang the chime at a doorway. After it opened, she walked in with resolve in her heart.

“Good day, Doctor Keller. May I speak with you for a few moments?”

The golden-haired woman greeted her with a smile. “Hello, Kharla. Come in and have a seat. Give me a minute to save my report and then I’m all yours.”

Kharla waited silently while the doctor clicked several buttons on her keyboard. She greatly admired Keller. She had to be extraordinarily proficient in her work to be the Chief Medical Officer of this entire base and command people who were much older than her. Once Kharla had decided to talk to one of the Lantean doctors, the choice had been obvious. No matter how much she trusted and respected the other doctors, especially Beckett and Martini, the best way to maintain a secret was to talk to the person in charge.

“Okay, I’m done. What can I do for you, Kharla? Are you feeling alright?” Keller carefully scrutinized her face, obviously performing a visual assessment of her health. Despite usually being the one eyeing patients, Kharla had grown accustomed to the Lantean doctors showing continued concern for her health. No one else had cared in such a long time.

“I am well, thank you,” Kharla wrung her hands in her lap. Her palms felt uncomfortably sweaty. “I would like to discuss a personal health matter with you. It’s very … private.”

“Don’t worry, Kharla, all doctor-patient interactions here in Atlantis are strictly confidential unless there is potential harm to others.”

“Good.” While Kharla had heard this policy several times before, she appreciated the reassurance. She took a determined breath and continued. “I wish to have a—a test performed to determine if I am with child.”

If Keller was surprised at the request, she did not show it. She stood up and stepped toward the doorway. “Alright. I will be right back. Let me get a hand held scanner and we can do the test right here in my office.”

The doctor was true to her word. She returned before Kharla managed to talk herself out of this course of action and flee the room.

Instead of sitting back behind her desk, Keller took the seat right next to her. “How late is your menstrual period?”

“It is hard to judge. I am very irregular.”

Keller turned on the scanner. “Before we do this, would you like to tell me your expectations for this test? Do you want to be pregnant?”

“No—no, I do not. I … something happened on Khamala Prime, not long before Colonel Sheppard and I escaped. I was forced …” Kharla gulped air to try to hold back her tears. So much for her determination to put on a brave face as she told her story.

In preparation for this conversation, she had conjured up a simple account about her rape by one of Vernara’s guards. This was as close as she could come to the truth while protecting the innocent. The tears now flowing from her eyes were completely sincere. Since she had not cried in a few days, she had thought that she had managed to overcome the overwhelming sense of loss that would sweep through her when she allowed herself to think about what had happened. She had not. Robinson had been right about having to expect up and down mood swings.

“Oh, honey, why didn’t you tell me before? Darn it, when you and the Colonel came back I wasn’t thinking things through. I’m so sorry. I should have realized that you might have been sexually assaulted.”

The sympathy in her voice broke Kharla’s control. Her tears flowed freely. “You do not need to apologize. I chose to stay silent. I was so ashamed,” she said in between sniffles.

“You have done nothing to be ashamed of, Kharla. Absolutely nothing. It’s the man who did this to you who is a monster and should be severely punished.” Keller’s voice exuded outrage.

Kharla choked back the impulse to confess that it had not been the man’s fault. “He is dead,” she blurted out. “He was one of the guards that Colonel Sheppard had to kill during our escape.”

“Oh, well … it’s okay. You don’t have to say anything more about it if you don’t want to. It’s going to be alright,” said Keller as she awkwardly patted her leg. With her free hand, she moved a light blue rectangular box closer to Kharla. “I think that it would really help if you talk to Doctor Robinson about this.”

Quite familiar by now with its purpose, Kharla pulled out a couple of soft tissues from the box. She dabbed at her eyes before blowing her nose, taking the time to collect herself.

“I have. She has been trying to convince me to talk to you for days.”

“Good. Now, I am pretty sure what your answer will be but as your doctor it is my responsibility to ask. Is there any chance that you will let me do a physical examination to make sure that you are alright?”

Kharla shook her head. “There is no need. I was sore and I spotted a little for two days but I am fine now. I may not have your training but I do know enough to be aware that everything is working properly in my body.”

“Of course you do, I did not mean to insult you. These are just some questions I have to ask in these types of situations. Would you at least allow me to take a blood sample to run tests to ascertain whether you have contracted any infectious agents from the … the guard? If that’s the case, we have medicines that will protect you from catching any diseases.”

Kharla had helped Lagona treat a handful of people from diseases originating in their sexual organs. Given the level of stringent medical control and frequent tests all the Atlantis personnel underwent, she felt certain that Sheppard would not be a carrier of any disease, let alone the ones associated with sexually promiscuous behavior. Vernara and her guards were another matter. A new nagging worry stopped troubling her as soon as she realized that Sheppard must have already undergone a whole scrupulous battery of tests.

Since she could not explain why she did not need such a test, she said, “A blood test would be fine. Thank you for suggesting it.”

“You are welcome,” she said. “I will take a sample after the scan.”

“Alright. Could we proceed with it now?”

Keller pressed certain controls on the scanner as she explained what would happen and what the expected results would look like. While the doctor passed the scanner across her mid-section, Kharla held her breath in anticipation. They looked at the result screen together. 

She read the results but asked anyway, “Is it positive?”

“Yes, it is. I’m sorry, Kharla.”

Kharla immediately teared up again. She snatched another handful of tissues.

“Look Kharla, I don’t know what your beliefs are about these things but I would like to explain to you the options available in this infirmary for women wishing to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester. Would that be okay with you?”

“Yes, please,” she said before pondering what Keller could have meant by vaguely mentioning her beliefs. _Beliefs about what?_ Seemingly innocuous comments like these brought to the surface all the small cultural differences between the Lanteans and all the other people Kharla had encountered in her young life. She could not imagine what beliefs had to do with the end result of the abominable deed Vernara had forced on her and Sheppard. “I cannot have a child now. I do want to be a mother someday, but not like this—never like this. This would not right in so many ways.”

“Kharla, honey, you don’t have to justify your decision. I understand completely. If you decide to go with this option, I would administer a short course of an oral medication that will stop the pregnancy. It’s safe and effective for use within the first seven weeks. In addition to cramping and bleeding similar to a heavy menstrual period, you might experience …”

As Keller continued with her detailed explanation, Kharla regained her composure. This was the right thing to do for herself and for Sheppard—not that she would ever tell him.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler Alert: The story is set post-season five in a slightly AU version of the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by J. Graham, A. Griswold and M. Scott. This chapter mentions a few events from The Lost, The Furies and Secrets, books 2, 4 and 5 from this excellent series.
> 
> Acknowledgements: A huge thanks to Amycat8733 for being my wonderful Beta reader. All mistakes are mine. I also want to acknowledge the original inspiration for this story: a scene from stella-pegasi’s very enjoyable “Always Hope” FF story. I took an incident that almost happened in her story to a much more extreme point and then I had to figure out its repercussions.

Bundled under several blankets, Rodney lay stock-still on Teyla’s couch, desperately trying to fall asleep. He fought a futile battle against all the confusing thoughts jumbling in his mind. His amazingly powerful brain was stuck on an endless loop, replaying his most recent conversation with Jennifer over and over.

In retrospect, he might have been a tad rash asking her to marry him after he had been gone from Atlantis for over two months. Not to mention that he had been a Wraith and that he had even fed on her. Although, Jennifer had been the one who not only volunteered to do it, but insisted that it had to be done to save his life, when the two of them and Ronon had been stranded on a far-flung planet, having to walk fifty kilometers to reach the closest stargate and return to Atlantis. Certain that the retrovirus gene therapy she and Beckett had concocted would protect her from the life-draining consequences of the feeding, Jennifer had talked him into it. If she didn’t do it for love, why else would she have done it? It made no other sense. In fact, as he replayed the scene in his head, Rodney distinctively remembered Jennifer telling him that she loved him. No wonder he had poured his heart out and proposed before he had a chance to rethink his timing. Clearly, his sense of romance totally sucked. That’s how he had ended up here, crashing in Teyla’s living room, and discovering that two of his teammates were shacking up. Good for them. He hoped that it would last much longer than his stint with Jennifer.

It felt as if he had barely fallen asleep when the sounds of little kid babble woke him. Thankfully there was no screeching or crying, just happy sounding, albeit annoying, chatter. Rodney pulled the blanket over his head and tried to tune it out, figuring that Teyla or Sheppard would deal with Torren. The previous night, when he got permission from Teyla to crash on her couch, he had eyed the baby monitor perched on the window sill near the kid-sized bed.

Soon enough he heard the light swoosh from a door sliding open. He opened his bleary eyes and saw Sheppard hunched over Torren’s bed. Bedhead or not, that dark hair consistently stuck out at the same odd angles. Running shoes on, sweatpants barely covering the waistband of his black underwear and no shirt suggested that Torren’s cries had caught him in the midst of getting dressed. It was good to see that things had not changed too drastically during Rodney’s absence from Atlantis. Despite the newly acquired domesticity, Sheppard clung to his routine of running at an ungodly morning hour.

“Dada?”

“Come on buddy, let’s get you to the potty. Then you can join mama on the big bed, while I go for a run,” Sheppard whispered as he reached over the low railing to scoop up the little boy and the stuffed animal he clutched. A classic Winnie the Pooh—excellent choice, Rodney thought.

“You run with Ronon? Me too,” In contradiction to his enthusiastic proclamation, Torren rubbed his eyes while leaning his head on Sheppard’s shoulder.

“You’re too sleepy now. We’ll run together later,” said Sheppard. When his eyes met Rodney’s, his voice rose to a normal volume. “Hey Rodney, sorry about the early morning wake-up call. I warned you about it.”

“I know, I know. No problem,” Rodney said.

As he watched Sheppard slip back into the bedroom, Rodney caught sight of a large area of ultra-pale skin on his friend’s back. It’s not as if he had made it a point to check out Sheppard’s body in the years that they had known each other, but he had a more than passing familiarity with it given the numerous times they had shared a locker room and even less private facilities on off-world missions. Despite the dim light from the dawning sun filtering through the window shades, a large swatch of skin was clearly several shades lighter than Sheppard’s natural skin color. What the hell had happened to him? Before he could voice the question, the bedroom door closed, leaving him alone in the living room.

Rodney flipped the pillow over and plopped his head back down on it. For a fleeting moment he contemplated not bothering going back to sleep and getting up to do some work, but then he remembered that he had not yet been given clearance to return to duty. His inability to irrefutably demonstrate to everyone that he was not some sort of Wraith sleeper agent was driving him crazy. There was no point getting up—he had nothing productive to do. Nothing. To try to clear his head, he began to mentally recite the prime numbers starting with 3001, 3011, 3019, 3023, 3037, … Elementary, imbecile-level stuff, precisely what might lull his genius brain to sleep.

He got to 9817 and then he was in the midst of a convoluted dream. There was Dust, the Wraith he had been brainwashed to accept as his brother (but who had really been his handler), caught in a hail of P90 fire. His chest spurted blood from over half a dozen wounds as he fell to the floor. Filled with fear and anger, Rodney grabbed Dust’s stunner and fired it repeatedly at a tall lanky man wearing the black Atlantis BDUs. Even as the man lay unmoving on the floor, blood seeping out of his nose and ears, he kept on firing and firing until his pool of blood merged with Dust’s. It was only then that Rodney recognized Sheppard.

Rodney jolted awake, his heart pounding.

“Rodney, are you okay?” Sheppard said from the kitchenette area. He held a glass of something, hopefully not orange juice.

“What? What happened?” he said, slurring the words.

“You were mumbling and seemed …uh … agitated.”

“Oh great, another crappy nightmare,” Rodney scrubbed his face trying to shake off the lingering sense of panic and dread.

Sheppard sat down on the arm chair next to the couch. “It’s okay Rodney, give it time. You’ve been through a lot. Believe me, I know about the pleasures of being transmutated into another creature and then waiting to get back to normal. It’s no picnic.”

Rodney managed to squelch the impulse to snap at Sheppard that he had no idea what he had gone through. Of course he did. Despite the years that had passed, Rodney had not forgotten the sight of a bugged-out Sheppard writhing in the infirmary isolation room through the torturous reversal of the iratus-bug conversion.

Fresh out of the shower, Sheppard had a towel wrapped around his neck. At least he was fully clothed. His hair defied the laws of physics as usual—remaining unresponsive to the pull of gravity even with the extra weight of the water clinging to it. When he scrubbed his head with the towel, Rodney noticed new scars on his wrists and arms.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

Sheppard looked at him with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”

“Your wrists and your back. How did you get hurt?” Rodney sat up as he remembered a horrible thought. “Oh god! Did it happen during the Wraith incursion, when they—we … stole the ZPM?”

“No, no I didn’t get hurt then.” Instead of elaborating, Sheppard took out a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his hair.

Initially stunned at the unfamiliar sight of Sheppard using a comb, Rodney got another good look at his wrists. “You didn’t try to kill yourself, did you? If you did, you were doing it all wrong.

“Geez Rodney, of course I didn’t try to kill myself,” Sheppard said, his voice torn between amusement and annoyance. “I got hurt in a stupid, off-world diplomatic mission gone wrong. No big deal.”

“Whatever caused the need for a huge skin graft on your back sounds like a very big deal to me.”

Sheppard sighed, “Well, okay, it wasn’t that pleasant but it’s over now and we have other things to worry about.”

“But …”

“Look, Rodney, what happened is the usual crap that happens. Don’t worry about it,” Sheppard said as he draped the towel over the back of a chair and walked to the door. “I’ve to go to work. Torren and Teyla already left so you’ve the suite to yourself for a while. Enjoy it.”

Sheppard’s oblique answer and hasty retreat did nothing to stifle Rodney’s curiosity and incipient nagging feeling of guilt. This one was in addition to the burden of guilt he already carried for his actions as a brainwashed Wraith scientist, a cleverman according to their nomenclature, who had helped Queen Death’s troops overcome Atlantis’ security protocols, infiltrate the base and steal the ZPM, killing many and injuring dozens of military and civilians. Rationally, Rodney understood to a certain degree that what happened when he was a Wraith wasn’t his fault, but he had to take complete ownership of this new sense of guilt. It was totally his.

In the past month, when he had finally come to his senses and realized that he was not a Wraith, he had spent countless hours thinking of ways to communicate with Atlantis to coordinate and plan his escape, but he had thought little if anything about what might have happened to his girlfriend, friends, colleagues and even his minions in his absence from Atlantis—when he wasn’t there to watch their backs and get them out of dire messes. Granted, he had spent every other waking moment terrified that he might slipup in his pretense of an obedient Wraith, and be killed or re-brainwashed. While he might have been too thickheaded to realize it when he was talking to Jennifer, here in the presence of his friend, Rodney felt ashamed for having been too self-centered to think about how his absence had affected the people he cared about. No wonder Jennifer thought of him as poor husband material.

Rodney considered the most likely reasons why Sheppard would keep whatever happened to him secret: was it because he didn’t think that he was a good enough friend to confide in or was it just the standard Sheppard silent-type, tough-as-nails default response? The later, he hoped.

At lunch the same day, he tried to get answers from Ronon. Probably not the smartest idea since the big guy hadn’t stopped acting leery around him, even though all that was left visible of his Wraith persona was the white hair. The rest of his body had been returned to his normal, albeit slightly skinnier self, thanks to Jennifer and Carson’s medical, surgical and gene therapy wizardry. Their form of pseudo-scientific, voodoo medicine did have its uses.

Ronon said, “Sheppard was kidnapped while we were off-world. We couldn’t find him. He’d been taken through several stargates. A few days later, with Kharla’s help he managed to escape and make it back to Atlantis on his own.”

“But who took him? What did they want from him? How did he get hurt?”

After chewing and (thankfully) swallowing another enormous bite of food, Ronon said, “If you want to know more, you should talk to Sheppard.”

“But he won’t tell me,” Rodney said, exasperated.

“There’s your answer.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Ronon shrugged his shoulders and picked up his tray. “See you later,” he said as he walked off.

After lunch Rodney returned to Teyla’s quarters to gather the meager possessions he had left there and move them to his new, back-to-being-single quarters. As he picked up the discarded clothes from last night, he noticed the computer sitting on the low table near the couch where he had slept. The blank screen appeared to be beaconing him. _Use me_ , it seemed to say.

Before he had a chance to rethink his actions, he logged on and began searching through his team’s mission reports for the previous two and a half months. He focused on Sheppard and Teyla’s because Ronon’s would be too ridiculously uninformative and he was not in the mood to enjoy their understated quality. As he swiftly skimmed through several weeks’ worth of missions, there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable beyond the reassuring fact that his teammates, along with a large contingent of other Atlantis military personnel, had been working their asses off to find him.

Finally encountering something worth reading, Rodney cringed at Teyla’s description of their failed rescue effort when he had not recognized them and continued to fire at Sheppard even after he had gone down. According to the linked medical report, one or two more stunner zaps would have sent him into a fatal arrhythmia. Crap.

He went through two more weeks of mission reports before he found what he had been looking for: Teyla’s description of a market fire that had been a cover for Sheppard’s kidnapping. That report was followed by others of failed attempts to find any clues to his whereabouts. Rodney skipped a whole bunch of reports until he flagged one from Sheppard. Unfortunately, this one contained the briefest of summaries, practically matching word by word what Ronon had told him at lunch. To his consternation, he was blocked from accessing the links to the additional information and accompanying medical report. He took that as a welcomed challenge.

In the next quarter hour, he tried several approaches to bypass the security measures. As he got nowhere, he grew irritated. It should not have been this difficult to access the files he needed to read. Frustrated at being completely blocked from accessing Sheppard’s medical records, he tried another tactic. Through a back way into the temporary medical files of non-Atlantis personnel, he obtained access to Kharla’s medical record, thinking that her information might shed some light on what Sheppard had gone through.

Rodney had seen Kharla in the infirmary a few times, while he had been confined during his transition back to human. Young, pretty, obviously bright and overly enthusiastic about the wonders of Ancient and Earth medicine—Rodney had found himself slightly amused, partly horrified, and a tad jealous of the way she drunk up every bit of knowledge the docs shared with her. A Junior Carson in the making. It might be nice to have a smart protégé like that of his own. All he got were either morons or overzealous idiots who tended to do things that would get themselves or others killed.

As he scrolled through the information on the screen, a couple of entries grabbed his attention. A little over a week after her initial medical exam and treatment for minor, but nasty sounding bruises and cuts (Rodney cringed when he read about the one on her throat), Kharla received two oral medications two days apart, first mifepristone and then misoprostol. The drug names rang a tiny alarm bell. Rodney mulled the information over for another minute before he remembered what they were used for. _Talk about too much information_ – _this was certainly something he did not need to know about Kharla’s personal life_. The little voice in his head that had been begging him to stop started sounding much more reasonable. He closed her record, making sure to erase all traces that he had accessed it, and went back to try a different approach for viewing Sheppard’s.

Concentrating on the computer codes, he did not hear the door open. By the time he felt a presence next to him, it was too late. A familiar hand snapped the laptop shut.

“Rodney, I can’t believe that you tried to hack into my private health files!” Sheppard said, in a weary, exasperated tone. “What is there about the words private, privacy, confidential, that you don’t understand?”

“But I didn’t get in,” he said before having a chance to reconsider his mistake. One small mercy was that he had stopped himself before uttering the word ‘yet’.

“That’s only because we had Jeannie and Zelenka upgrade all the security protocols while you were, um, gone. By the way, I’m pretty sure that Jeannie programmed the ones that blocked you and alerted me,” The last part, Sheppard said in a mocking tone.

With incredible self-control, Rodney held himself back from arguing that soon enough he would have found a way in. He knew that he had done two things wrong: the hacking and the being careless enough to get caught doing it.

“Look, I know that you went missing for almost five days and I saw the signs of serious injuries to your back, arms and wrists. That and the fact that you won’t tell me what happened raises a huge red flag. I’m worried about you.”

“A peaceful mission gone wrong, like I told you already. It’s the usual stuff, Rodney. I pissed somebody off. They got mad and captured me. It was a little rough but I got the best of them and escaped. Jennifer and Carson fixed me up. End of story.”

“But there is more to it isn’t there? They were more than ‘a little rough’ on you,’” Rodney punctuated that remark with air quotes and an extra dose of sarcasm. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed a huge skin graft on your back, not to mention the scars on your wrists and arm.”

“Okay, I admit that I was in pretty bad shape when I got back to Atlantis.”

“And what is your connection with that Kharla person? Carson gets misty eyed when he sings her praises about some botanical medical voodoo.”

“Kharla was practically a prisoner too. She helped me escape,” said Sheppard. “All her people are gone and she wants to learn everything that Beckett, Keller and the other medical docs are willing to teach her. She’s working her butt off in the infirmary. Don’t mess with her.”

“I am not going to mess with her. I was just curious,” Rodney didn’t need to know anything more about Kharla, so he got back on track to his main objective. “Look, you told Ronon and Teyla about what happened to you, right?” Rodney said.

“Teyla, of course. Ronon sort of ... well, yeah. But, no offense, they were here when it happened.” said Sheppard.

“No offense taken, but would you have told me if I had been here?”

“Ah … uhm,” Sheppard paused. “That’s not the point.”

“Yes it is,” Rodney said, peculiarly hurt by Sheppard’s persistently noncommittal responses. “You wouldn’t? But, why not? I’m part of the team, the same as they are. Like the Three Musketeers, which as you well know, should have been called the Four Musketeers, but what would you expect from a French author?” He snapped his fingers, “Or, better yet, the Fantastic Four—we tell each other important stuff. Don’t you trust me?”

“Rodney, it’s not that,” Sheppard chewed his lip, grasping for the proper words. “It’s—it’s complicated.”

Sheppard purposefully withholding of information on something that had clearly thoroughly shaken him felt like a betrayal, almost as bad as Jennifer saying no to his marriage proposal. Rodney thought—no, he was completely, absolutely certain that he and Sheppard were actual, honest to goodness best friends. For Pete’s sake, this was the guy he had turned to when he had been losing his memories and intellect, regressing to childhood, practically blabbering like a complete idiot. Even when he had forgotten who he was, he had known instinctively that he could trust Sheppard. Obviously, Sheppard did not reciprocate this certainty.

“Complicated? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You either trust me enough to tell me whatever it is that you are hiding or you don’t. I told you everything that I remember about what happened to me at the hands of the Wraith. Everything.” Rodney was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “No matter how potentially humiliating.”

Because he was forcing himself to be unusually observant, Rodney noticed Sheppard’s suddenly flushed complexion as he chewed his lower lip.

Sheppard’s anger at him seemed to dissipate. “Look, Rodney, with what the Wraith did to you, it’s amazing how you managed to stay true to yourself. You should be proud for being the worst Wraith ever, not feeding and shooting like a panicky human. And, most of all, for realizing that you weren’t one of them.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Thanks, I guess. But I should have figured it out much sooner before—before all the damage that I caused as a Wraith. The people that got killed …”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It definitely feels like it was,” said Rodney.

“Yeah, I can relate to that,” Sheppard said. After a long staring contest that made Rodney feel as if he was under a microscope, he added, “Fine, I’ll tell you. But not now. I have another meeting with Woolsey. Meet me at twenty-two hundred hours in the West observation room. Do you remember how to get there?”

“Yes, of course,” Rodney said.

“In the meantime, take it easy, Rodney, and stay away from secured files. They are secured for good reasons.”

\---------------------------

When Rodney arrived at the appointed time, Sheppard was already in the room, standing by the glass wall that looked out over the dark ocean. Because the room faced away from the lights of the Atlantis towers, they had a magnificent view of a star-filled night.

Sheppard turned around and said, “I am going to tell you what happened, but first you have to agree to abide by my conditions, without whining or otherwise trying to negotiate for a better deal.”

“But, but why?” Rodney asked, perplexed by the strange request.

“No arguments,” said Sheppard, his gaze locked on him.

Rodney sighed, “This is crazy, but go ahead and name your conditions.”

Sheppard walked over to the wall by the doorway. A small wall panel slid open, letting out chilly air. As he pulled out a six-pack of beer, Rodney wondered how many other rooms had these hidden Ancient refrigerators and why Sheppard hadn’t told him about them. He bit back the urge to complain.

In the low light he couldn’t read the label but the tall, dark amber bottles looked like good stuff. Not that it mattered; he hadn’t had any beer or other kind of Earth liquor in so long that anything would be considered good stuff right now.

“First condition is that we are going to drink a couple of these before I start.”

“Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable,” Rodney said.

“Second, you have to promise me that you will never again hack or even attempt to hack my medical and psych files.” Sheppard had that intense look that was usually reserved for recalcitrant troops that had royally messed up. It kind of reminded Rodney of the frosty times after Doranda. “Promise me that, Rodney.”

“Fine, I promise not to hack into any of your records ever again. Look, I’m truly sorry about that, it’s just …” Rodney was saved from trying to come up with a reasonable excuse by Sheppard handing him an opened beer bottle. “Thanks.”

Sheppard took a long slug from his bottle before speaking again. “Third, and this is also a deal breaker, Rodney, you have to promise me or, better yet, swear on the Holy Grail of the ZPMs or whatever deity or other thing works for you, that from now on you will absolutely, positively stop making Captain Kirk jokes at my expense.”

Rodney almost spit out a mouthful. It would have been a great waste. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not. I mean it, Rodney. From now to eternity, you will no longer make me the butt of your Kirk jokes. Swear or the deal is off.”

Rodney had rarely seen his friend look so earnest. Sheppard had put his bottle down on the window sill and folded his arms across his chest. A pose that in most people would be considered defensive but on him it emanated a menacing if-you–defy-me-I-will-kick-your-ass or, worse yet, never-confide-in-you-again message.

_What the heck had he talked himself into?_ Maybe he didn’t want to know what had hurt Sheppard so deeply. But to retreat now, after all his pushing and prodding, would be cowardly. Rodney placed his bottle next to Sheppard’s and held up his right arm. “Alright, alright. I do solemnly swear on my parents’ graves that I will never again utter a Kirk joke at your expense. Is that good enough or do you want to parse it out to make sure that I didn’t sneak in some ultra-clever loopholes?”

“Nah, that works for me.” Sheppard finally cracked a smile. He patted Rodney’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

Sheppard grabbed his bottle with one hand and the six-pack with the other. Then he sat down on the edge of the nearest bench. With three walls of floor to ceiling windows, this room provided the closest approximation to being outdoors in Atlantis. The longing looks Sheppard gave at the view left no doubt that if it hadn’t been unbearably cold out there—even for the guy who professed to like Antarctica—he would much rather be sitting on the furthest edge of a dock, his feet dangling over the dark waters.

Sheppard patted the empty spot next to him and pointed to the six-pack. “Now, we are going to have our drinks and then I’ll tell you what you missed.”

“Excellent plan,” said Rodney taking up the invitation to sit down.

They drank their first bottles in silence—except for a few well-placed burps. They were both obviously a bit out of practice imbibing any fermented beverages.

“So, let me guess,” Sheppard said, putting his empty bottle back in the cardboard bin. “Ronon is obviously Thing and you have me pegged as Johnny Storm and yourself as Mister Fantastic. I’m good with being a flying human torch and, I guess, you could pass as a scientific genius but you’re completely delusional if you think that you’re the leader of our group. Also, how does it work with Teyla being the Invisible Woman? As Sue Storm she is definitely not marrying your Mister Fantastic.”

Of all things, this stuff, these conversations with Sheppard about comic book superheroes and other inane subjects were among the things he had missed the most during his time with the Wraith. Despite their vast scientific knowledge, even the smartest of Wraith clevermen were no fun to hang around; they utterly lacked a sense of humor.

He unscrewed two fresh bottles and handed one to Sheppard. “I didn’t say that it was a perfect analogy. It was the best I could come up under pressure.” He shrugged. “By the way, congratulations on you and Teyla. It’s great. I’m very happy for you both. I really am.”

They clinked their bottles in a toast and dutifully worked on draining them. Rodney sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have to go pee in the middle of Sheppard’s wretched story.

After a few hefty slugs, he began his story. Since, for once in his life, Rodney did not interrupt him, he was up by two bottles by the time Sheppard finished his account.

“Wow,” he said. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah,” said Sheppard, eyeing his still half-full second bottle. “That cost me almost two weeks that I should have spent finding you.”

“Well, I wish I had been here to help find you,” Rodney said.

Rodney watched his friend chug down the remains of the bottle as he stared out the window. Now, teal and burnt-orange glowing whorls lit up the blue-black sky. This nightly aurora borealis show beat anything he had ever seen on Earth, even in Siberia. Alcohol and the beauty of nature were a good way to try to ease the pain of life. If only they had time for more of both.

What Sheppard had gone through sickened him. While he had lived in relative luxury and blissful ignorance as a Wraith—treated well, except for the kidnapping and forced-surgery/molecular tinkering—his friend had been kidnapped, tortured and abused purely for the pleasure of a sadist and her equally cruel guards. Sheppard hadn’t given any specifics about what was done to him, except admitting that he had been raped multiple times—which was an incredibly courageous and unprecedented admission in Rodney’s book.

As he wiped his mouth from the last dregs of beer, Rodney’s mind connected the dots that he had not been even remotely interested in connecting. Sheppard had not been the only one sexually abused; Kharla must have been too, which would explain her need for miscarriage-inducing drugs. Poor kid. At the very least, what he had observed of her in the infirmary suggested that she was now in a good place, moving on with her life and so on. Taking a sidelong glance at his friend, Rodney wondered if Sheppard knew. Of course, he would never ask. He truly regretted reading those files.

“Maybe, thirty years from now when we are cranky old men chugging down beers over a game of chess, we’ll find these stories funny,” he said, trying to lighten up the mood.

“I doubt it,” said Sheppard.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“So what are you going to do about your hair?” Sheppard’s voice sounded suddenly cheerful.

Rodney reflexively touched his head. “My hair is fine.”

“You’re right; it makes you look like Doc Brown in _Back to the Future_. Very cool. Maybe we should watch it again when we have time for another movie night.”

“You just want to make fun of me in front of Ronon and Teyla,” Rodney said.

“How could you possibly think that? I just love that movie,” Sheppard thought for a minute, mischief in his eyes. “Or, if you want, I could dig up the _Star Trek Next Generation_ episodes, when Picard gets turned into a Borg.”

“No,” Rodney nearly choked on the beer in the rush to protest that truly evil suggestion. “ _Back to the Future_ is a much better idea.”

**The End**


End file.
